Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)
- Thread starter ParadiseLost
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Yes, beyond the psychological effect (big unknown IMHO), one tactical nuke would have little effect due to the forces being rather dispersed in the war in general.
If they start chucking them by dozens, WW3 advance towards Paris style, that's a different scenario though.
You are basically assuming that if Russia uses one nuke and it doesn't shift the fortunes of war their way, one way or another, yet the West doesn't do much besides "strongly worded UN letter", they are just going to forget about the other thousands of warheads they have to leave it like that and continue losing the war.
If the alarm and horror at the half assed mobilization didn't achieve anything from within Russia, neither will use of nukes by Russia.
Russian leadership cares little about Global South's reactions, and Global South cares even less about Ukraine.
There is no hard distinction between tactical and strategic nukes, only the decision how big warhead and where. And considering how judicious are Russians with their conventional weapon targeting...
There is no question that influential people in Russian military leadership are believers in a terror bombing doctrine of some sort, and combined with the psychological effect of a small scale nuclear weapon use being the potentially strongest, it's quite possible they would try to amp up that aspect.
Ironic considering that the Global South were also victims of colonialism.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
Karlin probably wouldn't say this, but the answer is culture. Russia is a nation where everyone is corrupt so an honest man accomplishes nothing but losing out himself, letting someone else skim a bigger cut (is the way the corrupt justify it to themselves). And government corruption is even worse, because hey, they were probably up to no good with those resources anyway. And you don't have kids because you can't afford it and even if you could what kind of monster would you be to subject a child to this kind of life?
Ironically, being a "Western appendage" might actually improve the situation, because the west does try to cut down on corruption, at least when it is serious enough to pose a threat to productivity. The worst outcome for Russians would probably be to be defeated yet ignored: to live in a decaying battleground between spies of the eastern and western blocs.
So? Whining about colonialism is for dumb westerners, feel guilty, give money.
Meanwhile some of these countries wish they could do a little colonialism to a pesky neighbor or something.
Powerful Russian take lol:
nitter.1d4.us
The problem with expanding through territorial expansion is that you quickly run into the issue of diminishing returns (even the EU has this problem) and also with a sub-replacement TFR all of these gains are going to be eventually wiped away anyway. And in this case, since Ukrainians outside of Crimea and the Donbass hate Russia's guts, Russia isn't going to be getting very enthusiastic new citizens, which would mean that either the Ukrainian military would liberate them, they would eventually emigrate in huge numbers (either to Ukraine or to the West), or they could engage in civil disobedience.
Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes)
Russia has added 6 million people to its population this year.This is better demographic performance than any Sub-Saharan African country.
nitter.1d4.us
The problem with expanding through territorial expansion is that you quickly run into the issue of diminishing returns (even the EU has this problem) and also with a sub-replacement TFR all of these gains are going to be eventually wiped away anyway. And in this case, since Ukrainians outside of Crimea and the Donbass hate Russia's guts, Russia isn't going to be getting very enthusiastic new citizens, which would mean that either the Ukrainian military would liberate them, they would eventually emigrate in huge numbers (either to Ukraine or to the West), or they could engage in civil disobedience.
Yeah, I have a feeling that some Third Worlders might actually ironically yearn for a return to colonialism since for all of their talk about hating the white man, they might still view the white man's rule as being better than rule by their own tyrannical despots. This is also why I think that any Westerner who advocates for open borders implicitly acknowledges that decolonization has failed in huge parts of the world even after several decades.
Alex Isakov (@x1skv)
🇷🇺 population has been declining pre-war and the war will reduce it furtherReasons? Emigration, lower fertility and war-related casualtiesThis will erode potential growth and stretch fiscal policy, as the govt tries to reverse labor-force decline with pro-natalist policies
nitter.1d4.us
It's idiotic, joke tier ignoring of quality in favor of quantity. A lot of these people don't want to be there. Wouldn't even be so sure about the number, a lot of the formally registered people of occupied territories are internal or plain refugees in other places now, the 6 millions are a pre-war figure. Something like 10-20% of that is perhaps viable citizen material. The rest will cause trouble, bolt at first opportunity, or are poor, ill and mentally degraded old people who don't have the means, will and ability to move, or simply expect higher Russian pension. Not exactly a benefit to the country.Powerful Russian take lol:
Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes)
Russia has added 6 million people to its population this year.This is better demographic performance than any Sub-Saharan African country.
The problem with expanding through territorial expansion is that you quickly run into the issue of diminishing returns (even the EU has this problem) and also with a sub-replacement TFR all of these gains are going to be eventually wiped away anyway. And in this case, since Ukrainians outside of Crimea and the Donbass hate Russia's guts, Russia isn't going to be getting very enthusiastic new citizens, which would mean that either the Ukrainian military would liberate them, they would eventually emigrate in huge numbers (either to Ukraine or to the West), or they could engage in civil disobedience.
Meanwhile Russia has 7 figure numbers of own valuable middle class bolting wherever they can due to this.
By that logic, the West could "acquire" a large chunk of the population of Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and the like on a whim, without need to lose whole divisions for i t, but we all know what kind of trouble would that stink like.
Yeah, I completely agree with you that a huge part, probably the majority, of these Ukrainians are unlikely to be good citizen material. The Donbass is the only territory with real potential here, but Russia could have gotten that without a war, thus making the war pointless. And Yep, you are absolutely correct that the Ukrainians in Kherson, et cetera who are hostile towards Russia could emigrate at the earliest possible opportunity if Ukraine will fail to liberate their lands from Russia. Right now, they might hesitate to do this because they think that the war can still be won and their territory liberated, but if, for whatever reason, that will turn out not to be the case, then they will probably emigrate en masse.
The populations of Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, et cetera have low human capital on average, though the West could acquire a lot of high human capital as a result of a selective immigration policy. In fact, Canada has done just this over the last several decades, which is why its population has tripled over the last 75 years. If one wanted to maximize population and human capital, then a cognitively elitist immigration policy along with very high per capita immigration flows (such as in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, et cetera) actually does make a lot of sense. But of course Anatoly Karlin isn't actually advocating for this because he apparently thinks that keeping Russia Russian/Slavic is more important than this.
If you read pre-war materials, it was already wasted. Let's be honest, the young, smart and ambitious don't stay for a North Korea lite experience. And those who made that mistake ended up mobilized and more likely than not dead or crippled.
a) Human capital filtering is hard and not very quick.
b) Due to legal issues and political correctness, the West can't even use state of art means of doing so.
c) Cultural tensions can make even relatively smart and talented people not worth it. We don't want a million Osama bin Ladens even if we could have them and they had similar education to the original.
Canada can actually attract the quality human capital with what it has, Russia not really, in practice they would have to settle with those refused by Canada, USA, Europe, Australia etc.
And even then Canada is currently suffering... side effects. And those are very long term.
I guess not being in a rowdy neighborhood on the world map helps them afford to suffer such side effects, while a place that needs a decent amount of social cohesion and patriotism to survive couldn't.
Yeah, Russia's best move with the Donbass was to outright annex it back in 2014. Or, alternatively, not to get involved in Ukraine at all but instead to seek to attract quality immigrants from Ukraine. Without intense Ukrainian-Russian hostility, such an option would have looked much more attractive.
TBF, I suspect that people such as OBL are the exception rather than the rule. There are a lot of Muslims here in southern California, after all. Largely elites and/or middle-class people, I suspect. Most of them appear to assimilate well here. Maybe the fact that a lot of them are Persians makes a difference. I don't know?
And Yeah, Russia would likely have to get second-rate human capital even with a merit-based system simply because the Anglosphere is a more attractive destination all-around. I mean, what exactly is there to do in Russia? Other than Moscow and St. Petersburg, it's essentially a giant West Virginia! The Anglosphere at least has a lot more attractive destinations, just so long as you stay out of the shitty areas.
In terms of straight out benefits, even if it got them sanctioned harder, it would be a far better move. However, Donbass was not the goal, it was a "hook" meant to be used to control the whole of Ukraine by proxy. If annexed, it could not fulfill that role. Even if more of a benefit, another rust city region for Russia would not be a major benefit in the scale of things.
Why would quality immigrants from anywhere want to go to Russia?
If you want to start a business or work with high tech, you go to the West instead. Many times better pay, many times lesser chances of having your company stolen by some more or less legal mafia. Due to ease of migration and language, Russia can only reliably attract laborers from ex-USSR Central Asia.
On the other hand, they are in California. That says something.
Worse. In West Virginia, you can make much more money, and if you do, you have vastly lower chances of having it stolen from you while you end up in gulag or falling from a window while shot and poisoned. And the second part applies even to Moscow and St. Petersburg if you don't share with the right people.
Well, Russian nationalists such as Anatoly Karlin say (with hindsight; not without hindsight) that Russia should have conquered and annexed all of Novorossiya back in 2014. They claim that Russia would have subsequently experienced a huge popularity boost there just like it did in Crimea had it actually done this. But of course I don't know if this would have actually been enough in southern Ukraine, where even Putin's annexation of Crimea had already significantly reduced pro-Russian sentiment by April-May 2014 (the decline in pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine came a bit later). Of course, if many/most of the pro-Western people in Novorossiya would have left, then there could have been an even bigger boost in pro-Russian sentiments there afterwards.
Yep; makes sense.
Would you consider California a good place or a bad place?
Yep, that makes sense.
But if Crimea was so pro-Russian how could it even have such a boost? More like most of the people who weren't pro-Russian left.
However the Ukraine control plan would be almost as dead as it is IRL, without plausible deniability there sanctions may have been harder, and inventing a war would be harder too.
Good for having a tech jobs or the like, bad to live in, especially if you don't need to for the above. Unless you're a junkie or other special status group the local politics favor more than most places.
Crimea went from 40% pro-Russian to 90% pro-Russian according to some polls. So, there was already a lot of pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea beforehand, just significantly less so. Though it's worth noting that pre-invasion Crimea polls didn't yield consistent results:
Trump is Factually Right on Crimea
In a recent interview with ABC for which he is now taking flak, Trump said: As usual, Trump is right and cannot be stumped. Above is a list I compiled half a year ago with all the most prominent polls and referendums ever held that directly or indirectly queried Crimeans on their attitudes...
www.unz.com
Some pre-invasion polls did show a majority of Crimeans supporting Russian rule, just not all of them and not with 90% support.
Yeah, Western sanctions would almost certainly have become much heavier starting from 2014 in a scenario where Russia would have went for all of Novorossiya in 2014 since it would have been a naked conquest and not a support of a native separatist/autonomist movement like in Crimea and the Donbass. Putin likely did want Novorossiya to rise up against the Ukrainian government based on his 2014 speech(es), but he wanted them themselves to do it rather than having Russia conquer them. For plausible deniability reasons, most likely, as you yourself mentioned here.
To be honest, I don't think that even the dumpy parts of California are all that bad. I've been to Santa Ana numerous times. It's not as dumpy as Baltimore or Detroit is. Probably much less crime-prone relative to these two cities as well. Mexican-heavy areas are better than black-heavy areas, on average. But I live in a prosperous, affluent part of California. I just visit places such as Santa Ana from time to time. During the day, of course. Never at night.
There is also a deeper perspective that few touch though. Crimea had a majority Russian identifying population for the first time in history in... 1945. Yeah... It raises a question whether the scions of Russian Empire and Soviet Union should be allowed to reclaim the benefits of Stalin's crimes.Crimea went from 40% pro-Russian to 90% pro-Russian according to some polls. So, there was already a lot of pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea beforehand, just significantly less so. Though it's worth noting that pre-invasion Crimea polls didn't yield consistent results:
Trump is Factually Right on Crimea
In a recent interview with ABC for which he is now taking flak, Trump said: As usual, Trump is right and cannot be stumped. Above is a list I compiled half a year ago with all the most prominent polls and referendums ever held that directly or indirectly queried Crimeans on their attitudes...www.unz.com
Some pre-invasion polls did show a majority of Crimeans supporting Russian rule, just not all of them and not with 90% support.
Not exactly rise up. Putin probably wanted to set up a situation similar to Nagorno Karabach or Ossetia\Abchazia. An unrecognized, militant pseudostate that a state Russia wants to control cannot deal with, and so needs Russian mediation, which it will get only if it does what Russia says, and of course it's not allowed to crush that pseudostate either, under threat of Russian military intervention. The scheming we saw was that Russia was essentially demanding that the separatist territories get to have totally honest elections that count for Ukrainian government (while physically controlled by separatists, not Ukrainian government), and also have veto power over Ukraine's foreign relations and some internal policy matters.
And that's not a state that would be considered acceptable in saner parts of first world. Does Taiwan or South Korea have areas of similar description?
Well, to be fair, wasn't Crimea something like 49.6% Russian in 1939? So, already almost there even before Stalin's mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Honestly, though, I don't want to risk nuclear war over Crimea, but if Ukraine can reclaim Crimea without nuclear war, then that would be great. I do fear that Putin could use nukes over Crimea since at that point in time he might literally have nothing left to lose. The West should never recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea after this war, though.
Yep, that's absolutely correct. Putin very likely wanted to use Novorossiya to control the rest of Ukraine. He simply got a much smaller Novorossiya than he bargained for.
Probably not. But then again, East Asians are much less crime-prone than Latin Americans are. Though AFAIK Latin Americans in the US are much less homicidal than Latin Americans in Latin America are, which is a huge plus since we Americans get to enjoy the benefits of Latin American culture but without anywhere near as much homicides from Latin Americans. Too bad that our blacks have a large homicidal bad apple element among them, though.
Demographics of Crimea - Wikipedia
Even Putin is not senile enough to think Russia has nothing to lose beyond Crimea. Russia is a big country with interesting history, it has a shitload of things left to lose, even if it doesn't want to think about losing them.
Only as long as you don't let the Latin American's culture to dominate government and law enforcement. Because that would get you the same thing.Probably not. But then again, East Asians are much less crime-prone than Latin Americans are. Though AFAIK Latin Americans in the US are much less homicidal than Latin Americans in Latin America are, which is a huge plus since we Americans get to enjoy the benefits of Latin American culture but without anywhere near as much homicides from Latin Americans. Too bad that our blacks have a large homicidal bad apple element among them, though.
It was about 40% at the beginning of Stalin's rule.Demographics of Crimea - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Even Putin is not senile enough to think Russia has nothing to lose beyond Crimea. Russia is a big country with interesting history, it has a shitload of things left to lose, even if it doesn't want to think about losing them.
Only as long as you don't let the Latin American's culture to dominate government and law enforcement. Because that would get you the same thing.
Yeah, mass Russian migration into Crimea probably helped push up the Russian percentage there.
Well, if Putin loses Crimea, then he himself could quickly get assassinated. Russia will survive, but he himself might not.
Yeah, Latin American political culture unfortunately can be toxic, with their cartels, gangs, and extremely massive homicide rate. Got to keep enough white people in one's country to prevent that from happening. White people often tend to build the best societies. Well, them and Jews and East Asians.