…the conflict in Ukraine is unfolding similarly to others in Russia’s long history of failed or inconclusive imperial wars. Several times in the past few centuries, Russian leaders launched wars of conquest against foes they misunderstood and underestimated, and with little appreciation of the larger international context…
…The Crimean War (1853-56), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), World War I (1914-18), and the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-88) offer the most relevant analogies. All were wars of choice for territorial aggrandizement or other imperial interventions, which ended in military defeat followed by political upheaval.
Russia’s failure in these wars stemmed from common mistakes and shortcomings that also afflict Putin’s war in Ukraine. One common failing was to underestimate their foes’ military capabilities and societal resilience. Emperor Nicholas I expected the Ottoman Empire to quickly give way on his demand for a protectorate over Orthodox Christians in what is now Moldova and part of Romania, while Emperor Nicholas II and his commanders believed that the Japanese military could never stand up to a European great power. Similar hubris colored their assessment of the Ottomans in 1914-15, when they settled on seizing Constantinople and the Black Sea Straits as a war aim. Nor did Soviet commanders have much respect for the ragtag mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
Second, Russian leaders frequently downplayed the risks and impacts of foreign (i.e., Western) involvement that ended up prolonging the war and increasing the costs Russia was forced to bear. The landing of French and British troops in Crimea in 1854 forced Russia to fight on multiple fronts against better-equipped armies. British intelligence support enabled Tokyo to remain a step ahead of Russian plans throughout the Russo-Japanese War. While Russia declared war against Austria-Hungary in August 1914, it soon found itself at war with Germany, the Ottomans, and Bulgaria as well. A German-Ottoman blockade of the Black Sea Straits choked off Allied support, exacerbating the tsarist government’s inability to mobilize defense production. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted the United States, in uneasy alliance with Saudia Arabia and Pakistan, to arm the mujahedeen forces that ground down the Soviet army until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev ordered their withdrawal nearly a decade later.
With an economy far less dynamic that those of its Western rivals, Russia in each case found itself at an increasing disadvantage the longer these wars went on. As economic burdens and personnel losses mounted, so too did opposition not just to the war, but to the regime prosecuting it…
Damn-good article, but it’s missing an angle, from what I can see…
WHEN Trump finally SNAPS, & annexes Canada, seizes Greenland, uses
Alaska, navy+airforce, mainland+army+airforce, navy+airforce, Greenland,
… to completely seal-off Canada from all international trade, & severs all terrestrial Canadian international-comms, for his enforcing war-of-aquisition against us,
WHILE beginning Civil War Part2 ( all he has to do is “de-naturalize” all non-Republicans, & then there ARE NO non-Republican judges, enforcement, lawyers, doctors, ANYthing: it’s the perfect coup: he’s got the legal-leverage to do it right-now, & it’s only a matter of time, before he “fires that round” of legislative-artillery into the US’s legal definition ),
WHILE beginning war against Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, etc…
What happens to Europe, the second that personality snap happens?
Suddenly, … it’s the EU against BRICS through Russia, with zero help, or trade, from the Americas…
Putin, backed by the rest of BRICS, can butcher-up Europe, profoundly, in the following 7-ish years, before finally imploding.
People aren’t understanding the perpetual-escalation of Trump, & how it can play-out, if a “stroke” takes-out his empathy, his compassion, his honesty, his consideration, etc ( I’m not being facetious: the personality-change I’m expecting to happen in him will leave him as “human” as a crocodile-on-meth, but effective in enforcing totalitarian fascism against all lives that are foolish-enough to stand in his way ), leaving the resultant brain completely unconflicted: ONLY Dark Triad remaining…
& given the absurd probabilites that have been happening, lately, … that looks likely, now.
Wait & see, though, wait & see, & let the evidence decide if this is all nonsense, & his demise happens shortly, XOR … if this is spot-on, & it is the “status-quo will protect us, like it always has” position that “saved” so many Jews who got shipped to the concentration-camps
( in the documentary “Anne Franke Remembered”, a Jewess told us directly:
The nazis made a new rule, & we just said “oh, it’s Just One More Thing…”
then they made another…
and another…
then they made a rule making it illegal for Jews to go anywhere … & then … they knew it was too late.
Their unconscious-assumption that Status Quo would protect them, got them slaughtered, wholesale.
That history is repeating itself, under a different mask, right now, here.
Civil War Part2: confederate Reverse-Takeover™
will “get even” against all the non-confederates, once that “de-naturalization” law gets used to the degree they intend to exercise it.
It’s a classic case of "going along with the sociopath/psychopath, to the secondary-crime-scene, assuming that social-pressure will make them let-go-of their captive, & then, at the secondary-crime-scene, the captive discovers all the butchering-tools are ready & waiting, & … they can’t escape, now: it’s too late.
Whatever, the people whose roles oblige them to prevent what’s happening, won’t do-so,
so all this is … mere idiotic “blowing in the wind”, isn’t it?
IF anybody survives this century, THEN they’ll not make the mistakes we are making, EVER again. )
_ /\ _
Seems all the more reason that Ukraine shouldn’t capitulate
