News from Ukraine Conflict

[mirth]

NATO has no reason to take Moscow and Europe is a reverse Kursk writ large for Russia.

That's twice in 48 hours I agree with you. The End Times draw near.

[Gusington]

^Totally agree there. I even said that above that we don't have to worry about them going on a major offensive because their force projection is just not near the level of NATO's!

But if we take the initiative and try to remove them from Ukraine or Crimea (we = NATO) I think it would be much tougher. One more quagmire like other Western wars over the last 50 years, this time [refreshingly?] not in South Asia or against a Muslim enemy. But a quagmire either way.

The last thing the West would want are urban battles like the ones fought in Chechnya against the Russians. They would be bloody and brutal. And that doesn't take into account the question of "why" would we be fighting these battles. Do we even have a casus belli over there? Right now it's Ukraine's fight, as ugly as it is.

[LongBlade]

Which is why, if at all possible, we should avoid fighting them and employ the Reagan Doctrine and just bankrupt the bastards instead.

We're too busy bankrupting ourselves. There's nothing left in the till to spend further.

[JasonPratt]

By all means if we have to fight them go all in, but it makes more sense to me to teach them the basics of economics one more time.

As LB replied, we're too busy bankrupting ourselves; that might not work again.

The West has been very good at voodoo economics, but those are not economic fundamentals. We're the economic analog of a Russian getting roaring drunk on vodka in order to fight better, and then morosely nursing a hangover by drinking more vodka at an increasing rate, occasionally using the excuse of another fight to slam enough vodka to end the hangover for a while. Eventually the two vodka limits (the usual and the emergency) overlap and then, barf.

[Gusington]

Is now the barf?

[JasonPratt]

Not yet. We're still chugging vodka.

I really thought the barf was coming last year, or the year before, but here we are at new highs on the NYSE.

(Not that I want to see the barf; it could be cataclysmic.)

In related news, Obama sent a record 4 trillion dollar budget to Congress today. How are we going to pay for that? With barf.


The only essential difference between our nation and (let's say) Greece, in terms of economic strategy, is that we're still the world's reserve currency. So it doesn't matter much if we're deficiting faster than we can ever pay it back. Nor are we likely to ever not be the reserve currency (since we're the last remaining well-protected military superpower), unless we start defaulting on our notes.

Which could happen as a coordinated foreign strategy if certain nations (chiefly but not solely China) ever decided they'd be ahead by doing so.

[Gusington]

It has to be a desperate situation when deficit has to be used as a verb :)

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

There is never an intent to pay it back. Everyone has decided future "growth" can take care of the debt relative to the size of the economy. Except the growth is an accounting sham. Bigger $ on paper mean nothing to the real world. If you double prices, GDP grows on paper. Nothing real has changed.

Everyone wants the costs to be the problem of future generations. It is like a generation of people burdened with fetal alcohol syndrome that are expected to compete globally. They end up wanting more drink.

[pawelj]

^Totally agree there. I even said that above that we don't have to worry about them going on a major offensive because their force projection is just not near the level of NATO's!

But if we take the initiative and try to remove them from Ukraine or Crimea (we = NATO) I think it would be much tougher. One more quagmire like other Western wars over the last 50 years, this time [refreshingly?] not in South Asia or against a Muslim enemy. But a quagmire either way.

The last thing the West would want are urban battles like the ones fought in Chechnya against the Russians. They would be bloody and brutal. And that doesn't take into account the question of "why" would we be fighting these battles. Do we even have a casus belli over there? Right now it's Ukraine's fight, as ugly as it is.

Any war can be a quagmire if you let it. This is less likely as US would only need to support it with air power and let the Ukrainians do the leg work (for now). Casus belli is the Russian aggression on a sovereign state whose territorial integrity was guaranteed by the Budapest agreement.

[Gusington]

I guess at the end of the day I am just not convinced that we have any business mucking around in what has been a Russian sphere for a long, long time.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

What if they want to rejoin kaliningrad?

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

BBC news this morning had Ukraine calling up a general conscription. Without weapons they will probably fall soon. At least half the country will be taken.

[LongBlade]

I guess at the end of the day I am just not convinced that we have any business mucking around in what has been a Russian sphere for a long, long time.

With all due respect, that sounds like an echo of how the world viewed the Sudetenland.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I guess at the end of the day I am just not convinced that we have any business mucking around in what has been a Russian sphere for a long, long time.

With all due respect, that sounds like an echo of how the world viewed the Sudetenland.

Yes, I think Putin is out to test Obama. If he avoids, Russia will just take more before the fight starts. The only thing that will stop them is losing lots of equipment. Their men they will throw under the bus like they always have .

[JasonPratt]

It has to be a desperate situation when deficit has to be used as a verb :)

Switch a few vowels around (in a nifty rabbinic fashion) and we're defecating faster than we can ever pay it back.  >:D