Maasai 101
Lister
A...
The war in ukraine is a war between military might versus economic power. Tanks win in the short-term, banks in the long-term. And unlike many things in life, here for Russia the short-term matters way more than the long one.
The key for Russia is to first consolidate and then extend these military gains, to make all of that economic pain she will face worth it.
We across the world really really need to get our heads out of this paradigm that everyone everywhere only thinks in terms of material comforts or pain. That the only thing that drive aspirations and ambitions of great powers are “how many dollars and euros”. They don’t.
Nations and peoples very often think in terms of pride and honor. Of vanity and prestige. Thucydides warned us about it over two millennia ago when he wrote about the Peloponnesian Wars, on the pretexts why Sparta went to war against Athens. That has not changed.
Why can we not see that in perverse fashion, the very sentiment that is fueling Russia?
For three months before the invasion, most of the world not only in the West but globally said that no invasion would happen. That it was all a bluff, even as Russian forces systematically amassed and surrounded Ukraine. We literally saw it happen before our eyes day after day for weeks upon weeks … and just somehow chose to ignore all of the mountains of evidence. In ironic fashion, we acted precisely like Stalin did in 1941 on the eve of the Nazi invasion, even as the Germans systemically amassed an army of titanic proportions. We did likewise for almost three whole months prior to February 24, 2022.
The USA played “brimksmanship” with the Russians for years and years and the Russians backed down every time. All of the Russian leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev had fought in World War II or had seen up close at first hand the devastation that war had wrought in their country. They were unwilling to take the country into war. All Uncle Sam had to do was bluff and bluster and shake the “Big Stick” and the Russians backed down every time.
USA leaders and “diplomats” just assumed that they could ignore Russia’s concerns about anything and everything, go on pushing their agenda, and that Russia would always back down.
B.....
Now we are desperately clinging on to hope that Russia will get so bogged down in Ukraine, that she will not be in a position to have any more military conquests.
But remember this stark and sober warning from me here -
It is precisely hope which has brought us to this perilous moment today. Unwarranted hope.
And more of it may well doom The West to a fate far worse than what is already upon.
The hope that the liberal world order would persist, the hope that men like Putin would cease to exist, the hope that imperial nations that had declined would not have dormant revivalist ambitions.
It is time that we injected a healthy dosage of skepticism, vigilance and fear. A dosage that far from being alarmist, acts as a vaccine of sorts and makes us appreciate how precarious, precious and rare times of prolonged peace are throughout the record of history..
So in the spirit of that, please allow me to lay out the case for what may well be the course that;
The bitter truth is that Putin has achieved almost all of his political objectives in Ukraine and then some. And may I remind you once again of that Clausewitzian edict that holds to this day, that all war is but a means to political ends.
So let’s stack up what political ends Russia has either already achieved or is about to achieve.
Crimea is irretrievably lost to Russia by Ukraine.
The Donetsk and Luhansk provinces stand on the verge of being captured (not just the separatist regions which were already occupied but the entire provinces)
Both provinces will be irretrievably lost to two new regimes installed by Moscow much like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the case of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008.
Worst of all, the Russian Army with the aid of its navy have systematically captured territory in south, creating a land bridge between Donbas and Crimea. That land bridge will ironically enable Russia to continually fuel a violent insurgency in those two provinces against Kyiv, if the latter doesn’t cede them outright. And then Russia achieved some more territory in the South. Only Mariupol holds out on the southeast but is completely surrounded and is being starved and shelled, and once the key port of Odessa in the southwest falls?
Ukraine will be landlocked. She is doomed after that, given that her navy was already destroyed completely in the invasion of 2014, after many of her naval officers and commanders defected to Russia. Now I don’t need to explain the economic and geopolitical plight of a nation that both has no access to the sea and is also surrounded in the North, East and South by a very hostile and large military power. Russia can pretty much choke and kill any Ukrainian economic or political aspirations whenever she pleases by simply blockading the Black Sea.
There is zero prospect of whatever rump state of West Ukraine remains of ever joining NATO.
C....
As things stand today at the time of writing this, Russia will simply crush NATO if she wants to in the Baltic states.
The other Baltic states are tiny, they do not have a combined population of even ten million, their armed forces are puny, and their land mass is small enough that strategic depth is out of the question. Unlike Ukraine, these three nations don’t have multiple key cities to be captured.
You take Vilnius(Lithuania), Riga(latvia)and Tallinn(Estonia) and it’s GAME OVER
I have said and will say it again, not all members of a security treaty will be protected equally. Never mind what the ink says on paper. Some will be protected to death, others on a CONVENIENCE BASIS.
NATO notwithstanding the ink on the treaty and all of the big shit talk you will keep hearing, will not fight to the death for the Baltics or even Poland. And Putin knows that.
I conclude by asking you this; will NATO or e.g Germany, England or France risk outright war with Russia, if it puts Berlin, London or Paris into risk, even for Georgia or Poland?
The outright answer is NO!
The war in ukraine is a war between military might versus economic power. Tanks win in the short-term, banks in the long-term. And unlike many things in life, here for Russia the short-term matters way more than the long one.
The key for Russia is to first consolidate and then extend these military gains, to make all of that economic pain she will face worth it.
We across the world really really need to get our heads out of this paradigm that everyone everywhere only thinks in terms of material comforts or pain. That the only thing that drive aspirations and ambitions of great powers are “how many dollars and euros”. They don’t.
Nations and peoples very often think in terms of pride and honor. Of vanity and prestige. Thucydides warned us about it over two millennia ago when he wrote about the Peloponnesian Wars, on the pretexts why Sparta went to war against Athens. That has not changed.
Why can we not see that in perverse fashion, the very sentiment that is fueling Russia?
For three months before the invasion, most of the world not only in the West but globally said that no invasion would happen. That it was all a bluff, even as Russian forces systematically amassed and surrounded Ukraine. We literally saw it happen before our eyes day after day for weeks upon weeks … and just somehow chose to ignore all of the mountains of evidence. In ironic fashion, we acted precisely like Stalin did in 1941 on the eve of the Nazi invasion, even as the Germans systemically amassed an army of titanic proportions. We did likewise for almost three whole months prior to February 24, 2022.
The USA played “brimksmanship” with the Russians for years and years and the Russians backed down every time. All of the Russian leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev had fought in World War II or had seen up close at first hand the devastation that war had wrought in their country. They were unwilling to take the country into war. All Uncle Sam had to do was bluff and bluster and shake the “Big Stick” and the Russians backed down every time.
USA leaders and “diplomats” just assumed that they could ignore Russia’s concerns about anything and everything, go on pushing their agenda, and that Russia would always back down.
B.....
Now we are desperately clinging on to hope that Russia will get so bogged down in Ukraine, that she will not be in a position to have any more military conquests.
But remember this stark and sober warning from me here -
It is precisely hope which has brought us to this perilous moment today. Unwarranted hope.
And more of it may well doom The West to a fate far worse than what is already upon.
The hope that the liberal world order would persist, the hope that men like Putin would cease to exist, the hope that imperial nations that had declined would not have dormant revivalist ambitions.
It is time that we injected a healthy dosage of skepticism, vigilance and fear. A dosage that far from being alarmist, acts as a vaccine of sorts and makes us appreciate how precarious, precious and rare times of prolonged peace are throughout the record of history..
So in the spirit of that, please allow me to lay out the case for what may well be the course that;
The bitter truth is that Putin has achieved almost all of his political objectives in Ukraine and then some. And may I remind you once again of that Clausewitzian edict that holds to this day, that all war is but a means to political ends.
So let’s stack up what political ends Russia has either already achieved or is about to achieve.
Crimea is irretrievably lost to Russia by Ukraine.
The Donetsk and Luhansk provinces stand on the verge of being captured (not just the separatist regions which were already occupied but the entire provinces)
Both provinces will be irretrievably lost to two new regimes installed by Moscow much like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the case of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008.
Worst of all, the Russian Army with the aid of its navy have systematically captured territory in south, creating a land bridge between Donbas and Crimea. That land bridge will ironically enable Russia to continually fuel a violent insurgency in those two provinces against Kyiv, if the latter doesn’t cede them outright. And then Russia achieved some more territory in the South. Only Mariupol holds out on the southeast but is completely surrounded and is being starved and shelled, and once the key port of Odessa in the southwest falls?
Ukraine will be landlocked. She is doomed after that, given that her navy was already destroyed completely in the invasion of 2014, after many of her naval officers and commanders defected to Russia. Now I don’t need to explain the economic and geopolitical plight of a nation that both has no access to the sea and is also surrounded in the North, East and South by a very hostile and large military power. Russia can pretty much choke and kill any Ukrainian economic or political aspirations whenever she pleases by simply blockading the Black Sea.
There is zero prospect of whatever rump state of West Ukraine remains of ever joining NATO.
C....
As things stand today at the time of writing this, Russia will simply crush NATO if she wants to in the Baltic states.
The other Baltic states are tiny, they do not have a combined population of even ten million, their armed forces are puny, and their land mass is small enough that strategic depth is out of the question. Unlike Ukraine, these three nations don’t have multiple key cities to be captured.
You take Vilnius(Lithuania), Riga(latvia)and Tallinn(Estonia) and it’s GAME OVER
I have said and will say it again, not all members of a security treaty will be protected equally. Never mind what the ink says on paper. Some will be protected to death, others on a CONVENIENCE BASIS.
NATO notwithstanding the ink on the treaty and all of the big shit talk you will keep hearing, will not fight to the death for the Baltics or even Poland. And Putin knows that.
I conclude by asking you this; will NATO or e.g Germany, England or France risk outright war with Russia, if it puts Berlin, London or Paris into risk, even for Georgia or Poland?
The outright answer is NO!
