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talkpolitics2022-03-27 10:20 am
dancesofthelight) wrote in talkpolitics2022-03-27 10:20 am
Entry tags:
Putin's speedrunning Nicholas I and Ivan the Terrible continues at lightning speed
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/25/world/ukraine-russia-war
In the beginning the glorious Russian Empire was to be reborn and Ukraine de-Nazified, especially of the worst and most evil Nazis in the eyes of glorious Rodinia, the ones that pray in Hebrew, wear prayer shawls, and go to synagogues. Those are the Nazis they've always hated most, not least because Russia defines 'Nazi' here to mean 'Ukrainians that want to be Ukrainian." They're not opposed to Nazi paramilitaries, or they wouldn't be using the Wagner Group as their executioners in the Kyiv front and in Mali, after all.
Now a month into the war that was no doubt meant to showcase the revival of the great Russian imperial dream of Ivan III and Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and Stalin Russia's armies are seeing fragging on a more gruesome scale than the USA in Vietnam, its losses by its own admission outpace ten years of war in Afghanistan and the entirety of US losses in 20. Its military power is a sham, it is depleting its armies worldwide to reinforce failure, and every time so far Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive the Russians can neither stop it nor slow it down.
For the long-suffering reputation of Soviet military technology, Ukraine is the very vindication it's needed since 1991. In a characteristic irony of Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet history this vindication is also the long-belated vengeance of the peoples of Ukraine against their Muscovite overlords, who've gone from fearsome and efficient to laughable at a level they haven't been since the Time of Troubles. Russia has gone so far into the dismal dregs of defeat that it has had to accept it cannot, in actual fact, absorb the state of Ukraine and is now claiming in a transparently bad lie that it 'merely' wants to annex Donetsk and Luchansk.
In reality again based on Ukraine's shattering its armies whenever it launches an attack I think there are serious questions of whether or not the Russians can hold out on the defensive at this point and have the ability to do so. This isn't the Tsarist or Soviet armies where they had an ironclad will on the defensive even at their worst offensive performance. This is the late-stage Livonian War/First Chechen War all over again where Russian troops are likely to jump out of their APCs and run like Hell and where Ukraine sees the wisdom in letting them as it spreads demoralization and does ten times more than its own armies do.
If Ukraine, as is looking like it might genuinely be possible, wins an outright triumph against Russia that shatters its military power for a generation on top of enfeebling its economy and kicking it right back to where it started in 1991 in the most lopsidedly successful enforcement in sanctions, it will be a geopolitical sea-change to match the collapse of the USSR. Karabakh is flaring up again. Chechnya and even Khazan, as well as a few of the other non-Russian majority areas in the Federation might demand greater autonomy or outright secession.
Russia has chosen to vindicate its strength in the methods of the old school that worked so well for Tsars and Soviet premiers in times past when it was free to indulge in wanton savagery at will. It even did so in the 21st Century where it repeatedly and gruesome proved that Arab bodies are only politically useful if Washington's airpower and ground troops kill them, otherwise states are free to outdo Genghis Khan at leisure because they're only Arabs, who gives a fuck? And as it turned out when it tried this shit with people who are equal or superior to it in technology and willingness and ability to fight, its power is a sham and it was really, all along, indulging in wanton savagery out of the old school because the world doesn't care if anyone other than the USA does it.
This is the big problem with relying on rule of terror as one's preferred method of the first resort. It works if it wins, if it fails it makes people look laughably stupid and accelerates the countdown of the doomsday clock to the decline and fall of the state in question. This was so for Nicholas II and Ivan IV and even Mikhail Gorbachev, whose attempts to wield the army and KGB against Soviet dissidents failed and so did the military-police putsch to remove him.
What happens in a world where both Russia and the United States have indulged in idiotic wars of regime change that leave their armies embarrassed and mark the failure of old model imperialism by the crash of the bomb?
In the beginning the glorious Russian Empire was to be reborn and Ukraine de-Nazified, especially of the worst and most evil Nazis in the eyes of glorious Rodinia, the ones that pray in Hebrew, wear prayer shawls, and go to synagogues. Those are the Nazis they've always hated most, not least because Russia defines 'Nazi' here to mean 'Ukrainians that want to be Ukrainian." They're not opposed to Nazi paramilitaries, or they wouldn't be using the Wagner Group as their executioners in the Kyiv front and in Mali, after all.
Now a month into the war that was no doubt meant to showcase the revival of the great Russian imperial dream of Ivan III and Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and Stalin Russia's armies are seeing fragging on a more gruesome scale than the USA in Vietnam, its losses by its own admission outpace ten years of war in Afghanistan and the entirety of US losses in 20. Its military power is a sham, it is depleting its armies worldwide to reinforce failure, and every time so far Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive the Russians can neither stop it nor slow it down.
For the long-suffering reputation of Soviet military technology, Ukraine is the very vindication it's needed since 1991. In a characteristic irony of Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet history this vindication is also the long-belated vengeance of the peoples of Ukraine against their Muscovite overlords, who've gone from fearsome and efficient to laughable at a level they haven't been since the Time of Troubles. Russia has gone so far into the dismal dregs of defeat that it has had to accept it cannot, in actual fact, absorb the state of Ukraine and is now claiming in a transparently bad lie that it 'merely' wants to annex Donetsk and Luchansk.
In reality again based on Ukraine's shattering its armies whenever it launches an attack I think there are serious questions of whether or not the Russians can hold out on the defensive at this point and have the ability to do so. This isn't the Tsarist or Soviet armies where they had an ironclad will on the defensive even at their worst offensive performance. This is the late-stage Livonian War/First Chechen War all over again where Russian troops are likely to jump out of their APCs and run like Hell and where Ukraine sees the wisdom in letting them as it spreads demoralization and does ten times more than its own armies do.
If Ukraine, as is looking like it might genuinely be possible, wins an outright triumph against Russia that shatters its military power for a generation on top of enfeebling its economy and kicking it right back to where it started in 1991 in the most lopsidedly successful enforcement in sanctions, it will be a geopolitical sea-change to match the collapse of the USSR. Karabakh is flaring up again. Chechnya and even Khazan, as well as a few of the other non-Russian majority areas in the Federation might demand greater autonomy or outright secession.
Russia has chosen to vindicate its strength in the methods of the old school that worked so well for Tsars and Soviet premiers in times past when it was free to indulge in wanton savagery at will. It even did so in the 21st Century where it repeatedly and gruesome proved that Arab bodies are only politically useful if Washington's airpower and ground troops kill them, otherwise states are free to outdo Genghis Khan at leisure because they're only Arabs, who gives a fuck? And as it turned out when it tried this shit with people who are equal or superior to it in technology and willingness and ability to fight, its power is a sham and it was really, all along, indulging in wanton savagery out of the old school because the world doesn't care if anyone other than the USA does it.
This is the big problem with relying on rule of terror as one's preferred method of the first resort. It works if it wins, if it fails it makes people look laughably stupid and accelerates the countdown of the doomsday clock to the decline and fall of the state in question. This was so for Nicholas II and Ivan IV and even Mikhail Gorbachev, whose attempts to wield the army and KGB against Soviet dissidents failed and so did the military-police putsch to remove him.
What happens in a world where both Russia and the United States have indulged in idiotic wars of regime change that leave their armies embarrassed and mark the failure of old model imperialism by the crash of the bomb?