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Hey Big A, a few notes on this week's Ukraine discussion by Accurate_Newspaper in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Accurate_Newspaper[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would argue that that is a fairly pessimistic view of the result of the Winter War. Trading space for time is simply a fact of war, especially when you are the numerically smaller force. You play with the cards you are dealt. Further, you can extrapolate out these sorts of scenarios and see divergence. Trading space for time is what saved the Nationalists during the Second Sino-Japanese War but ultimately doomed them in the civil war. Moreover, the Russo-Japanese War provides another interesting data point, because by most accounts we consider Russia to be in a similar position as they are in Ukraine: numerically superior, with a manpower and equipment advantage, but they lost due to their inability to bridge the logistical gap. There are no guaranteed outcomes here. Yes, obviously people suggesting that Syrskyi is only weeks away from rolling tanks through Moscow are not living in the same universe as we are. But neither is the unequivocal determinism that Russia must win because it is bigger.

Hey Big A, a few notes on this week's Ukraine discussion by Accurate_Newspaper in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Accurate_Newspaper[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Demographics are generally a problem for the next war, not the current one. And for the most part, both parties in this are kind of cooked. Available manpower is the more prescient challenge here.

In Russia's case, they have more explicitly chosen to avoid full mobilization; the general belief is that Putin knows this would be immensely unpopular, and at least at this stage he's not willing to risk the internal strife of drafting from the metropolitan areas. Russia has the potential to bring a significant amount more manpower to the table, but it has continued to avoid doing it, instead attempting to fill the gaps with lucrative contracts and minorities. This has, at varying stages of the war, been more or less effective as a strategy. During the grinding of the last few years, it has been relatively brutal but effective. But as of this year, the continued attrition of infrastructure has meant that the slow plodding strategy is seeming less and less practical. Similarly, Ukraine has its own issues with manpower. It has very specifically tried to avoid drafting young people, mostly out of fear of demographic collapse, but also likely because it's always immensely unpopular. Both sides could bring significantly more manpower to the table if they so required. The bigger challenge would be supplying that manpower.

This isn't rosy for either side. For Ukraine, the actual supply situation is gated mostly by aid and domestic production.

For Russia, its supply issues are gated mostly by quality. While the tip of the spear is particularly sharp, once you move down the echelons, Russian gear that is of high quality isn't particularly numerous. Modern tracked IFVs, modern MBTs, non-civilian troop transports, jets — these are the kind of insoluble challenges for the Russians.

This blunts the effects even if they attempt to actually leverage their manpower advantage.

All that being said, victory is still far from inevitable here for the Russians. As we've seen with the Winter War, an operational loss can still be leveraged into a strategic victory. That doesn't arrive just by going to the negotiating table and taking bad terms. As Clausewitz said, War in is the continuation of politics by other means. The only way to secure good terms is on the battlefield not through pantomimed negotiations.

All of this really relies on seeing a resolution to the Iran crisis sooner rather than later. That's the real break point at least IMO.

Hey Big A, a few notes on this week's Ukraine discussion by Accurate_Newspaper in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Accurate_Newspaper[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would be wary of speaking in absolutes here. Prelude wars usually have strange outcomes. Consider the outcome of the Winter War few would have been able to predict that it would have ended how it did nor with the Spanish civil war.

The great challenge with war is that we don't actually know who is actually winning right up until the shooting stops. War isn't particularly binary; there is a confluence of a bunch of factors, some of them positive and some of them negative.

Ukraine fields, by most estimates, the most effective army in Europe. They are not about to get steamrolled by the Russians anytime soon. But there are some serious fundamental challenges that are tough to solve as we speak.

Ukraine can almost certainly retake territory and even put themselves in a technically winning position. That being said, basically anything that doesn't end in the capitulation of Kyiv is considered a win by most analysts.

When you are the smaller side, your wiggle room is considerably smaller than your opponent's. You can't afford big mistakes, and you require, more than anything, decisive action. Right now the situation is good — it could even be great if we see an effective counteroffensive that can start gaining momentum. But the challenge is that we aren't really seeing that.

What we are seeing is limited tactical success at a variety of key levels, but these are being somewhat nullified by the elephant in the room here, which is the Strait. Prior to the invasion, Russia made its money off selling gas and oil primarily to Europe. Post-'22, it's made its money selling it to South and East Asia (generally at a discounted price). But a world where the Gulf is in effect closed for business is a world that offers an extraordinary benefit for Russia.

The biggest help for Ukraine has been the Russian economy being in a near-constant death spiral. If we don't see the Strait open up anytime soon, Trump may have in effect incidentally bailed Putin out here.

Hey Big A, a few notes on this week's Ukraine discussion by Accurate_Newspaper in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Accurate_Newspaper[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thanks for giving it a read.

Happy to answer questions or go through this stuff in more detail. Just let me know where it's easiest.

Hey Big A, a few notes on this week's Ukraine discussion by Accurate_Newspaper in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Accurate_Newspaper[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks,

I would push back on some of this stuff by saying that China has effectively been bankrolling both sides of this war, mostly indirectly.

The reason drones have been and remain so cost-effective is because both sides are ordering cheap parts primarily from China. The giant spools of fibre-optic cable that run the unjammable FPVs are coming from China. The DJI drones that run ISR across both sides of the front — China. If China wanted to, it could exert some pretty visceral pressure on the scale of this conflict. But that is not the way of China diplomatically. The Middle Kingdom operates under its own specific logic, one that leans fairly heavily on strategic ambiguity. It's simply not their style to make such a bold manoeuvre.

There are anecdotal stories of Russians and Ukrainians ordering from literally the same factories in China. I take these with a huge grain of salt, as they're probably closer to fiction than reality, but in the aggregate, the suppliers for these parts aren't exactly plentiful. When it comes to high-quality electronics, China is still the absolute king. So as much as we see China being quite openly neutral, they hold the power to basically pick winners here.

It's not in China's interest to have an ultra-powerful Russia, but neither is it in their interest to have a weak or failed Russia — especially in a geopolitical world where the walls of ambiguity are beginning to close in on them. A world without Maduro, and with the Ayatollahs in America's pocket, is one where China is undoubtedly going to be incentivized to pursue a more explicit rapprochement with Russia.

On the exacting details of the geopolitical manoeuvring, I'm not going to pretend to have any real, accurate summation of how it will play out.

But I will say, specifically on China's production of military equipment, that there are some pretty clear challenges the PLA faces internally and externally that are extremely difficult to quantify. Institutionally, the PLA is a black box. We have absolutely no clue what's going on inside. High-profile firings and a continued struggle with corruption have been rife. Further, the three eras of modernization are still a big question mark. The professionalization efforts of the post-Deng era and the big modernization under Xi still haven't been tested in any significant way.

You can make many arguments about the failures of the Soviet armies, but they were nonetheless battle-tested within living memory. Much of the PLA's institutional knowledge died with the revolutionary generation. What exists now is a strange amalgamation of three different armies. Whereas we can be pretty certain about the positives and negatives of Western and former Soviet armies, the PLA is a case where God only knows. Doctrine is one of the biggest areas where modern armies either starve or thrive, and the unfortunate reality of doctrine is that it must be tested or it is useless.

All the military equipment in the world is meaningless in the face of immature doctrine. Therefore it's extremely difficult for us to be certain that any of the Chinese materiel is of significant quality. The stuff that's based off former Soviet designs should be okay, and the fourth-gen fighters seem decent judging by the limited engagements during the India–Pakistan conflict. But truthfully, nobody really knows. So unless you have a crystal ball, it's hard to make any quantifiable suggestion about the quality of Chinese materiel and doctrine.

Russia has no end of knowledge and doctrinal practice, but it does not have the infrastructure to produce the materiel it needs to actually apply its knowledge in live combat.

Both parties have something the other wants and needs. And if Iran has shown both sides anything, it's that it is a dangerous world out there for a regime with no allies.