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What will the unforeseen consequences of the war be?


Team America really did hit the mark with him.
As tragic as the situation is in Ukraine, we shouldn't lose sight of the importance of awarding millionaire actors and film producers the recognition they deserve. No doubt Zelensky would like to get this war wrapped up with the X on his calendar getting closer.
 
As tragic as the situation is in Ukraine, we shouldn't lose sight of the importance of awarding millionaire actors and film producers the recognition they deserve. No doubt Zelensky would like to get this war wrapped up with the X on his calendar getting closer.
Tbf Hollywoos really should step up to the plate and accept some responsibly for what is happening in Ukraine.

If Harry Potter had been filmed in St Petersburg this whole thing could have been avoided.
 
Tbf Hollywoos really should step up to the plate and accept some responsibly for what is happening in Ukraine.

If Harry Potter had been filmed in St Petersburg this whole thing could have been avoided.
Then Russia really would be cancelled
 

Team America really did hit the mark with him.
I thought that. It really is like a scene from that movie. Reality has moved beyond satire.
 
Understand people's problems with the channel but agree with anaylsis (was going to say can't broadly faulton outlook but does have its own elephant)

 
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Pink Floyd reforming was certainly an unforeseen consequence of the Ukraine war.
 
This is what the IMF foresee:


Gourinchas said the war had increased the risk of “a more permanent fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs with distinct technology standards, cross-border payment systems, and reserve currencies.

“Such a tectonic shift would entail high adjustment costs and long-run efficiency losses as supply chains and production networks are reconfigured. It also represents a major challenge to the rules-based framework that has governed international and economic relations for the last 70 years.”

He added: “The economic effects of the war are spreading far and wide – like seismic waves that emanate from the epicentre of an earthquake – mainly through commodity markets, trade, and financial linkages. In many countries, inflation has become a central concern. In some advanced economies, including the US and some European countries, it has reached its highest level in more than 40 years, in the context of tight labor markets.

“There is a rising risk that inflation expectations become de-anchored, prompting a more aggressive tightening response from central banks. In emerging market and developing economies, increases in food and fuel prices could significantly increase the risk of social unrest.”

The likes of Chomsky would have a field day decoding some of that language and discussing what the 'rules-based framework' actually meant in practice, but I'll avoid trying to give my own imprecise lecture on that right now and will hope that people here already know how to critique that framing and read between the lines of how the world has been orders post-WW2.
 
I like this due to a longstanding interest in energy issues and transition this century:


The nine-point plan, entitled “Playing My Part”, urges citizens to drive less, by using public transport, or working from home three days a week.
It also calls on citizens to:
  • Heat their homes less in winter, and turn the air conditioning down in summer.
  • Drive more slowly on highways, with the car air conditioning turned down, which uses less fuel
  • Use the train instead of flying
  • Travel by public transport, walk, or cycle
It also calls on cities to promote car-free Sundays, as some already do.
 
Wonder what'll happen in Russia's peripheries. Armenia is reliant on Russian peacekeepers to avoid another war with the Azeris. Turkey has interests in Central Asia. Lots of countries/people might want to stir up Muslim majority areas within Russia. They still have influence in Syria. Russian failures, so far, are bound to effect how people think about them and either they can't react to stuff, or they have to overreact to reinforce their credibility.
 
Anne Applebaum and somebody called Noah Millman, quoted in The Atlantic, saying things that I, and maybe one or two others on here, were saying months ago. (Which just goes to show that we are fucking better than they are, but don't get paid for our efforts.)


Who Knows What Putin Will Do Next?

When I write that Americans and Europeans need to prepare for a Ukrainian victory, this is what I mean: We must expect that a Ukrainian victory, and certainly a victory in Ukraine’s understanding of the term, also brings about the end of Putin’s regime.
To be clear: This is not a prediction; it’s a warning. Many things about the current Russian political system are strange, and one of the strangest is the total absence of a mechanism for succession. Not only do we have no idea who would or could replace Putin; we have no idea who would or could choose that person. In the Soviet Union there was a Politburo, a group of people that could theoretically make such a decision, and very occasionally did. By contrast, there is no transition mechanism in Russia. There is no dauphin. Putin has refused even to allow Russians to contemplate an alternative to his seedy and corrupt brand of kleptocratic power. Nevertheless, I repeat: It is inconceivable that he can continue to rule if the centerpiece of his claim to legitimacy—his promise to put the Soviet Union back together again—proves not just impossible but laughable.
The possibility of a succession crisis in a nuclear power––and the added possibility that a figure more hawkish than Putin could prevail in such a crisis––is the stuff of nightmares. Now imagine instead that Ukraine wins the war, absent any significant escalation from Moscow. Even that will pose seemingly unsolvable challenges, Noah Millman argues:

We can always hope that battlefield defeat will awaken Russia to the folly of the course it has set on, and that neighborly relations with Ukraine become plausible in the wake of a Ukrainian victory, if not immediately then after a few years and a leader or two has passed from the scene. But hope is not a strategy … Ukraine today is succeeding on the strength of its own people, but with American and other allied arms and intelligence and with Russia substantially cut off by sanctions from key trading partners that it needs to resupply its own armed forces. Are we willing to sustain that posture indefinitely?
Can we, even if we want to?

Russia isn’t quite as formidable as it wished the world to believe, but it’s nowhere near as pathetic as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and after twelve years of containment and sanctions that failed to achieve regime change in that country we got fed up and decided to make the situation worse by invading. If it makes sense for the United States to support Ukraine against Russia in its current war, then ipso facto the United States must strive to achieve a better end-game than the one I describe above, and achieve it on the assumption that Russia’s conception of its national interests will not change in any material way. A Ukrainian battlefield victory, if it comes, will be a victory for a stubbornly independent people against an aggressive invader; it’s impossible for any lover of freedom not to cheer for such an outcome. Achieving peace in the wake of victory, though, is at least as important, and at least as challenging. Perhaps peaceful coexistence is impossible unless Russia changes fundamentally. But if you don’t believe Russia will change fundamentally, then that means peaceful coexistence is impossible, full stop.

Having spent a lot of time there, and having known many Russians, almost exclusively of the 'liberal' variety (quotations because liberals in Russia-and Ukraine for that matter-bear only tenuous relation to liberals in the west), I am all but convinced that Russia cannot, and therefore will not, fundamentally change.
 
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FFS gosub you just seem to post other people's stuff like Tweets and articles all over this forum (like all of U75, not juist this thread) with either no comment or no useful comment. Can you just stop it, it really is annoying.
 
Anne Applebaum and somebody called Noah Millman, quoted in The Atlantic, saying things that I, and maybe one or two others on here, were saying months ago. (Which just goes to show that we are fucking better than they are, but don't get paid for our efforts.)


Who Knows What Putin Will Do Next?


The possibility of a succession crisis in a nuclear power––and the added possibility that a figure more hawkish than Putin could prevail in such a crisis––is the stuff of nightmares. Now imagine instead that Ukraine wins the war, absent any significant escalation from Moscow. Even that will pose seemingly unsolvable challenges, Noah Millman argues:



Having spent a lot of time there, and having known many Russians, almost exclusively of the 'liberal' variety (quotations because liberals in Russia-and Ukraine for that matter-bear only tenuous relation to liberals in the west), I am all but convinced that Russia cannot, and therefore will not, fundamentally change.

The collapse of Putin/Putinism/the current system of structures that create central political power in Russia has long been a predicted/discussed outcome of a Russian military defeat within NATO and EU states and structures - and out here in Poland it's a very real concern within political and military circles. However, throwing Ukraine, and by definition (given that no one out here believes that if you throw meat to a wolf, it will go away) the Baltic States, Moldova etc.. to the wolves is an acceptable price to pay in order to kick that can down the road for what could be just a few years.

Russia could very easily turn into Haiti with Nukes - in 10 years, in 5 years, perhaps before the end of next year - that is accepted here, but here's the thing: it's veiwed as one possibility within a range of possibilities of inevitable change within Russia. No one thinks that Russia is going to become a liberal (ish) democracy (ish) that's broadly friendly with its immediate western neighbours - it's simply a question of which version of shit within a range of shit options it becomes.

Chinese vassal state(s?), Haiti with Nukes, Balkan style break-up and endless internecine wars - all are considered real possibilities that could happen with 20 miles of where I'm typing this out.

I'm sorry that you think that all of these states, their cultures and their people's should suck it up and play along with Russia's delusions that it's the hegemic culture and political leader in Eastern Europe, but I have news for you - no one here believes that, or is prepared to accept that as a price of what Russia and it's apologists call peace, and everyone from the North Cape to the Black sea calls Russian domination and occupation.
 
The collapse of Putin/Putinism/the current system of structures that create central political power in Russia has long been a predicted/discussed outcome of a Russian military defeat within NATO and EU states and structures - and out here in Poland it's a very real concern within political and military circles. However, throwing Ukraine, and by definition (given that no one out here believes that if you throw meat to a wolf, it will go away) the Baltic States, Moldova etc.. to the wolves is an acceptable price to pay in order to kick that can down the road for what could be just a few years.

Russia could very easily turn into Haiti with Nukes - in 10 years, in 5 years, perhaps before the end of next year - that is accepted here, but here's the thing: it's veiwed as one possibility within a range of possibilities of inevitable change within Russia. No one thinks that Russia is going to become a liberal (ish) democracy (ish) that's broadly friendly with its immediate western neighbours - it's simply a question of which version of shit within a range of shit options it becomes.

Chinese vassal state(s?), Haiti with Nukes, Balkan style break-up and endless internecine wars - all are considered real possibilities that could happen with 20 miles of where I'm typing this out.

I'm sorry that you think that all of these states, their cultures and their people's should suck it up and play along with Russia's delusions that it's the hegemic culture and political leader in Eastern Europe, but I have news for you - no one here believes that, or is prepared to accept that as a price of what Russia and it's apologists call peace, and everyone from the North Cape to the Black sea calls Russian domination and occupation.
Regarding your last paragraph, I'm not sure where you get the assumption that this is what I think should happen. Certainly there's nothing in the post you are replying to that implies any such thing. It may bear tenuous relation to what I might have said elsewhere on here, but again you have to make the distinction between what I think should happen and what I think is likely to happen. It is, after all, fairly rare that anybody gets exactly what they'd prefer, either politically or in life generally.

And Anne Applebaum wrote the article quoted (so long ago that I'd all but forgotten both it and this thread), not me.
 
Yep well. In Bethlehem anyone trying to steal a Banksy is warned that they will be sent to HQ Ramallah for the cops to deal with them

Cops guarding Banksy is an interesting take on it
 
It didn't go down well with everyone, painting attention-grabbing pictures on people's recently ravaged homes.
 
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