Go Zelensky Go! wrote:
Roy, thank-you for your insights on this thread. Very detailed and informative.
What is your opinion here: Will NATO be drawn into a war with Russia? It's arguably already happening, right?
How much longer do you foresee this going on? I don't see any peace as long as putin is alive.
For the past two years, Putin has been in a sweet spot where he has been able to manage guns and butter. Western sanctions on Russia left gaping holes to allow Russia's energy sector to maintain enough production to fund the war effort with manageable budget deficits. Putin has been able to use the war to maintain a tight grip on power and smash all dissent. The war effort has required just enough man power to cause significant inflation due to labor shortages, but not enough man power to put Russia in a position where its ability to sustain fighting is compromised. And the oligarchs with interests in military production and oil and gas are getting rich beyond their wildest imagination. So, it has been a Goldilocks war for Putin. Russia is at full employment, which helps manage inflation. Frontline losses are sustainable and there is just enough progress on the front lines to keep the Russian mil bloggers happy. Most importantly, as Orwell astutely noted, perpetual war is a necessity for a fascist dictatorship.
Putin's plan in Ukraine is to wear down the West and Ukraine to the point where eventually Ukraine's defenses collapse and Russia can quickly overtake the western part of the country. The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted ten years. Putin sees no problem with a 10 year war in Ukraine. Putin's broader goal is to push west all the way to the Carpathian mountains in western Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland and Romania. Putin has been certain for decades that the West is just months away from launching an invasion of Russia. Russia has no natural land barriers between the Ukrainian border and Moscow. It is all flat agricultural land that is very difficult to defend. This is the lesson Russia learned in WWII as the Nazis were able to quickly blitz across rural western Russia to lay siege on Russia's major cities. Putin also wants to secure Baltic Sea and wants to take back Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, which Putin considers to be party of Russia proper and not even a former Soviet satellite. So, Putin is convinced that Russia will not survive unless it can capture the Carpathian mountains and takes back the Baltic states.
The only good news with Putin is that he is a product of the Soviet security state and knows in great detail how a nuclear war would play out. Any use of nuclear weapons by Russia would result in St. Petersburg and Moscow being vaporized. Admitting Finland and Sweden into NATO ensures that Russia has no way to stop the US nuclear triad. Russia's plan then is to move slowly to the west and try and politically undermine support for NATO across Eastern Europe and possibly exploit social issues like immigration to get pro-Russian right wing governments installed in Poland, France and Germany.
The big question is whether Putin will ever try (or be able to) go from the current state of mobilization for his "special military operation" to a full on national mobilization for a wider assault on Eastern Europe. Currently, that is not an option. Russia has burned through too much equipment and is facing growing budget deficits. The one thing that can stop Putin dead in his tracks is when the "butter" in "guns and butter" runs out. And butter is Russian pensions. The only time Russians have taken to the streets to protest Putin in significant numbers is when Putin proposed pension reforms.
I do think Russia is looking for a way to end the war so it can rebuild its economy and try to sabotage Western support for NATO before Russia launches its next war. Ukraine has been very effective in hitting Russia's energy sector and the West has finally gotten around to sanctions on Russia's energy sector that have some bite to them. But the Trump administration does not have the technical expertise to get a deal done. Macron or Merz or some combination of EU leaders will need to be the ones to get a deal across the finish line.
