• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    14 hours ago

    NATO can’t field an actual war against Russia, NATO countries don’t have the industrial capacity to do so. NATO has big scary tools, but not many of them, and in a protracted war where the industrial power wins Russia would win out. It would be very bloody, long, and NATO would lose, so it’s unlikely that there will be all-out war.

    • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      20th C thinking.

      • NATO countries would tool up fairly quickly on a war footing
      • strategic advantage is no longer about tanks and artillery, it’s about the next few generations of drones
      • dirty tricks haven’t even begun, really
      • energy capacity is at this weird turning point of shifting production options and efficiencies, makes predictions harder
      • Ukraine’s industrial capacity has changed to a war footing and they now export drones
      • a non-democratic Ukraine would be a risk as big as oligarchy Russia
      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        7 hours ago

        NATO countries have hollowed out their industry for the last century, instead preferring to outsource production and plunder the world. Further, ballistic munitions are still useful, as are drones. There’s no realistic scenario where NATO countries can mobilize to full wartime economies, not with industry as hollowed out as it is.

        • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          It’s cute you think the military industrial complex is so weak, or that the near moritorium on long range ballistcs hasn’t been incredibly beneficial to Russia.

          In reality, the second money starts pouring into a European war effort, all thoughts of AI will be gone, they’ll be pulling apart gpus for spare silicon for the war machine. That’s profit at an unbelievable scale.

          Like this almost feels like cope…

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            6 minutes ago

            The MIC runs on the profit motive, it’s far more expensive to develop comparable tools than compared to state-run industry, and the west has already holowed out its own industry.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        12 hours ago

        They are steadily achieving all of their stated objectives for the SMO. Russia isn’t trying to do a Marvel-style total destruction of Ukraine like you see in hollywood depictions of war.

        • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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          11 hours ago

          Their goalposts have moved. Originally they attacked on all fronts including the capital and expected to topple Ukraine within a week.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            11 hours ago

            Their goalposts haven’t moved, their strategy was to open with shock and awe and then push for protracted war, taking advantage of surprise. They didn’t expect to topple Ukraine in a week, that’s largely a misquote from the early 2010s.

        • Prove_your_argument@piefed.social
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          12 hours ago

          “steadily” as in… they complete one every couple of years? How long until they’re done? 10-20-30 years? They started this in 2014 and 11 years later they’ve accomplished next to nothing beyond creating a pile of bodies.

          If germany took this long to take poland it probably wouldn’t have been world war at all.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            12 hours ago

            The SMO started in 2022. In 2014, after the western-backed Euromaidan coup, Crimea was annexed but then there were multiple attempts to resolve things peacefully, called the Minsk Agreements, which Kiev broke both times. In 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk seceded from the new far-right led Ukraine, fastforward to 2022 after a decade of fighting and Russia agrees to go in and resolve things by force.

            Since 2022, Russia has steadily been gaining more and more territory, and has nearly completely taken the four oblasts they declared as their targets for annexation. Ukraine has slowly but steadily been losing ground, and NATO has proven to be incapable of matching Russian industrial output. Russia isn’t trying to do a Blitzkreig, they are going carefully to fully demillitarize Ukraine and prevent casualties on their own end. They have the industrial capacity to field a protracted war, so they are playing to their advantage.

            • fox2263@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              I read a few articles that said at russias current pace it would take them a hundred years to take Ukraine.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                11 hours ago

                They aren’t trying to take Ukraine, though, and they can progress faster as frontlines are broken through. Pokrovsk, as an example, is currently encircled by Russian forces and will probably be abandoned by Kiev soon, or a large-scale siege will occur.

                Whether you’re pro-Ukrainian or not, it’s important to recognize that Ukraine is steadily losing ground and has far less staying power in a protracted war than Russia does. Russia’s advancing slowly and basically forcing a long-term war, which works in their favor.

                • fox2263@lemmy.world
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                  11 hours ago

                  Shame Russia is doing so poorly after so long and with so many casualties. Plus their own economy is in the shitter. Having to import oil and gas now since their refineries seem to always be on fire. And pick up soldiers from Africa and Indonesia and let’s not forget North Korea.

                  Ukraine will fight to the last man

                  • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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                    4 hours ago

                    That’s how the Russian army works. Legitimately look at every front in modern history, hell you can go back pretty far.

                    Russians know how to do one thing, die. They win wars by attrition. They slow down armies with winter or their own corpses.

                    Russian war isn’t a strategy, it’s a death pact.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    11 hours ago

                    Russia is achieving its objectives, it’s economy is strengthened by trade with BRICS, and the damage on refineries has been minimal. Ukraine doesn’t want to fight to the last man, support for the war is waning and forced conscription is already in place. The fact that Russia has volunteers from the DPRK, Cuba, etc doesn’t mean they are losing, Ukraine has volunteers from western countries as well.

                    I hope the Ukrainian people can be free from this war soon, and that means surrender now. I don’t share your bloodlust.

    • Hyper_red [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      13 hours ago

      I think if NATO did go to war with Russia, it knows it has a much larger military and supposedly “better” equipment.

      I think they’d try to end it really quickly and either totally devestate russia quickly or take out their industry.

      But Israel-iran has showed that not even America has the ability to do an actual war against another industrial power

      • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        9 hours ago

        I think if NATO did go to war with Russia, it knows it has a much larger military and supposedly “better” equipment.

        I think they’d try to end it really quickly and either totally devestate russia quickly or take out their industry.

        Okay wild fantasies aside, back here in the real world, what’s NATO supposed to actually do? If they try to ‘devastate’ Russia, as in attempt to turn it into Gaza, Russia will 100% nuke the offending countries seriously firing this kind of barrage against them. They’ve been reasonable against Ukraine because Ukraine has hardly been a threat (in fact most Russians would probably say too reasonable), but if a threat they’ve credibly been fearing for decades decided to pull out all the stops, so will they; NATO knows this which is why they weren’t officially in the war this whole time; the best time to be involved was literally day 1, the next best time was day 2, and so on and so forth.

        The simple fact is when Ukraine falls, the war is over; you want a country that was willing to risk their safety to get involved in a conflict? You have Yemen, they showed what a country willing to get bombed is willing to do; Euro countries don’t want to get bombed; Let me say that again: Euro countries don’t. want. to. get. bombed. All these countries in Europe had their chance to show how far they were willing to oppose Russia, back when Ukraine had a lot more people to throw in the meat grinder; there’s a lot less Ukrainians now who can and will fight, and Euro forces would have to bear the brunt of the fighting, and if they were willing to do this, they would’ve done it far earlier. Europe. Is. Scared. They won’t join this fight.

        When Ukraine falls, the war is over.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        12 hours ago

        If they had to, then they would try shock and awe. Protracted war wouldn’t work out, whoever has industry holds the cards long-term. Russia would go for stall tactics, I would think.

    • sgtlion [any]@hexbear.net
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      8 hours ago

      Weren’t all these points equally valid when the West actively thrust Ukraine into war, too?

      You’re assuming NATO instead maybe cares about the lives of non-Ukrainians in Europe, I wouldn’t rely on that. We are all meat for the MIC profit blender. Winning or losing the war is almost irrelevant, no citizen of the core is safe so long as their deaths might make line go up in the short term.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        8 hours ago

        Ukraine is an attack dog for NATO, and porkie would love to send workers to war, but not if it hurts their bottom line. That’s why they’ve tried to use proxies like Ukraine.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Russia has had its ass kicked with western hand-me-downs. Once they roll out the real kit, the whole thing will be over within days.

      • Matty Roses@lemmygrad.ml
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        5 hours ago

        You’ll be greeted as liberators?

        Well, not YOU personally . . . Chickenhawks saying this crap never seem to make it to the front lines.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        9 hours ago

        Russia is winning now, and hasn’t fielded the “real kit” either. NATO just does not have the productive capacity to field a long term war. I’m not sure why warmongers like yourself keep thinking there’s going to be a grand turning point, in a decade when we look back on this event I fear the warmongers will say they knew the outcome all along.

          • limer@lemmy.ml
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            7 hours ago

            There is nothing militarily nato can do. Even if different countries wanted to help more and actually fielded armies, it would be a stalemate. Only a political solution will work.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                7 hours ago

                Because it doesn’t have the power to take down an industrialized nuclear power like Russia in a short term war. I don’t see what you’re imagining here.

                • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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                  7 hours ago

                  Last time they tried our grandparents took 105 days to beat Russia with very little formal military and even less hardware. Sure, we had some help back then too, but today it’s on a whole different level. And we’re just a single small country up north, NATO as a whole is quite a bit bigger.

                  Russia currently has lost million soldiers and stockpiles of soviet relics are pretty much empty with a strong breeze away from total economy collapse. They don’t have power to conquer a potato field from a modern western country right now, much less against the whole global west.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    7 hours ago

                    This is entirely divorced from reality. Modern western countries have hollowed out their industry, and can’t fight a true war against a peer country that’s actually industrialized. Russia’s economy is doing well, and they have strong trade through BRICS.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    7 hours ago

                    Because western countries do not have the industrial capacity for a long-term war nor the ability to topple a country as large as Russia in the short term.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            7 hours ago

            Not at all, and I don’t think ableism is a substitute for a point. I want the war to end, which means peace talks now and concessions from Ukraine.

            • fox2263@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              Why should they concede anything. They’re a sovereign nation, and owe nothing. The war can end right now by Russia returning back whence it came.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                7 hours ago

                Because they are losing the war. The world does not run on Marvel-logic, Russia isn’t going to stop until their stated goals are met.

                • rustyfish@piefed.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  Oh, now it’s a war again. Before that you called it a special military operation. At least you are learning. Slowly, but hey: baby steps.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    6 hours ago

                    They largely mean the same thing. Russia calls it the SMO, others call it the Russo-Ukrainian War, etc. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called, I’ve used the two interchangeably.

                • fox2263@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  They may be “losing”. But Russia isn’t entirely “winning” either.