A bit of a problem with Sacks is he's not very informed on the history of the situation. I heard him on a podcast that he first heard about Ukraine in like Jan 2022 but proceeds to propagandize his position noisily over people who have lived there for decades.
American failure to fund Ukraine is possibly our greatest failure in 20 years. And we've made some doozies in that time.
To take a concrete and financial tack: The alternative to funding Ukraine right now is an increase in western annual defense spending of 1% of GDP. Indefinitely.
But this is also possibly the first just war since world war 2.
We were funding them before, but now we are not, and I believe the op of this thread was commenting on how we are not funding then right now.
By the time the election season is over and we have another chance at funding
Ukraine, it will have been a year of blocked funding. Personally I find it fundamentally unserious that a participant in a war leaves for a year or more, let alone the world's top superpower.
Its been less than two weeks since the last aid package.
> By the time the election season is over and we have another chance at funding Ukraine
I wouldn't discount the chance of a discharge petition succeeding. Heck, I wouldn't even entirely discount the chance of the spate of resignations continuing and Republicans losing their House majority before the election, though that's less likely.
> Was there ever really a chance Ukraine would win? Idk how they could. Russia has more people.
The USSR had more people than Afghanistan, too, and was much more legitimately a superpower than Russia is today.
The USA had more people than Afghanistan, and was even more of a superpower than the USSR when it invaded Afghanistan.
The USA had more people than Vietnam.
China had more people then Vietnam.
The Arab states in 1948 had more people than Israel.
The Arab states in 1967 had more people than Israel.
The Arab states in 1973 had more people than Israel.
I think your metric for when the attacker is guaranteed to win a war where it invades another country is... not well calibrated to historical evidence.
All those conflicts you mention with the exception of Israel are guerilla warfare wars, which this is not. The Russians couldn't just sit there and shell/bomb the towns of Afghanistan because they hardly had any actual towns. Same thing for Vietnam
Here Russia can just sit back and obliterate the Ukraine's cities. The point about people is that Ukraine isn't going to be able to push Russia back, which for the most part they haven't.
> All those conflicts you mention with the exception of Israel are guerilla warfare wars, which this is not.
“Guerilla warfare” is just what happens in an modern invasion/occupation/regional separatist warfare when the local/peripheral side is sufficiently weak in conventional military terms relative to the invader/occupier/central authority.
That the Ukrainian side of the Russo-Ukrainian War is not forced into guerilla war is not a positive sign for the Russian side.
If you think the number of people is what counts: there's a cliché that the attacker needs a 3:1 advantage. Russia's population of 15-30-year-olds was less than three times Ukraine's, if you exclude immigrants.
Nobody said anything about the economy. The second most powerful country. The have a massive amount of nuclear weapons and their ability to manufacture traditional weapons is far less than the United States.
Ukraine, is just depending on a hope and a prayer from other countries to support them, which is faltering and realistically they have lost a ton of young people and many of the kids don't want to fight, they want to escape.
I don't see any realistic situation they can do anything to Russia. Russia's economy hasn't collapsed. So I'm not sure what they can do.
Mostly irrelevant to their ability to defeat Ukraine in a conventional war, though it may constrain outside aid to Ukraine somewhat.
> and their ability to manufacture traditional weapons is far less than the United States.
This is not something that works in their favor.
> Ukraine, is just depending on a hope and a prayer from other countries to support them, which is faltering and realistically they have lost a ton of young people and many of the kids don't want to fight, they want to escape.
Russia has also lost a ton of young people (far more than the USSR lost over a decade in Afghanistan, a major contributor to the political collapse of the USSR), and seen lots of people trying to escape. Or firebombing recruitment centers, etc. They've also lost a lot of not young people — quite a lot of their senior/experienced combat pilots, and an unusually large proportion of field grade and general officers.
Economists have a way to measure that: Add the manufacturing sectors of the economy and convert currencies using PPP. At a pinch, GNP minus raw materials will do.
So what? if the US is spending 8x as much it's a losing proposition for the US eventually is it not? The US is already suffering with a massive and growing national debt
War is a loss for everyone, when it happens. That doesn't mean that future potential war is a loss for everyone.
One of the common stories of wars up through the ages is this: Country A has merchant shipping and a navy. Country B raids the merchant ships. Country A declares war on B. The war is a loss for everyone, including A.
After the war, merchant shipping resumes. Is it going to be raided again? Those who might raid it know that A will declare war even if it's clear that war leads to pain and suffering for A itself.
Avoiding war is great if you can either protect your interests with a credible threat or in other ways. Remaining credible is a challenge if you've backed down a few times.
> if the US is spending 8x as much it's a losing proposition for the US eventually is it not?
If you assume that the only effect of the war is spending and that the spending has no productive value (the second might be approximately true the first is... not, even approximately), then... sure, that seems true by definition.
If you drop the first assumption, then the other effects of the war (and more specifically, the delta between with the spending and without) is important to determining if the spending is a net win or a net loss.
Winning would have looked like sending the invaders back to Russia. There was a chance for that early on if Biden had been a bit less dithering about arming them. Now it's trickier as the Russians are kind of dug in.
Russia has more people but the collective west backing Ukraine have more money and tech.
I'm not sure how it plays out. The Russians probably have the upper hand at the moment as the Ukrainians are running out of ammo due to the speaker and Trump supporters blocking aid.
Ukraine may make things expensive enough for Russia that they choose to back off. Attacking their oil refineries is going quite well at the moment.
It has never been as simple as whichever side has more people, and that has only become more true as military technology has advanced.
Many lessons came out of the first two world wars about how modern warfare would be fought. One of them was that it didn't matter how many well-rested soldiers you had willing to fight. If you ran out of ammunition and your opponents have enough left to annihilate you, you'll probably lose.
We'll never know for certain, but there's a real possibility that if it hadn't been for the Lend-Lease program, the USSR would have run out of weapons and supplies, and Hitler would have defeated the Soviets.
Obviously, there's limits. One soldier sitting on warehouses of ammo isn't going to take out a force of ten thousand. But at the outset of the war, active Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops by only 4 to 1. In the right circumstances, those are winnable numbers. And even better for the Ukrainians, Russia couldn't send all of their troops in. They needed to keep the bulk of them in Russia for defense.
Estimates of causalities in the war range from 1:3 to 1:5 in favor of Ukraine. So even if Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops 2:1, all Ukraine has to do is continue killing Russian soldiers at the same rate, and eventually Russia will run out of soldiers to send.
That's what "winning" looks like for Ukraine. This is a war of attrition. They win by exhausting the enemy before the enemy exhausts them.
But it relies on Ukraine continuing to have enough ammo to kill the Russian soldiers at that rate. This is a war of attrition. Russia's firmly on a wartime economy, and unless the bottom falls out on them, they'll continue to produce weapons and ammo for the duration of the war. Enough for every solider they field? Maybe, maybe not, but they won't run out.
Ukraine, on the other hand, relies on the West for weapons and ammo. If it runs out, it loses, and that's why so many people are upset about Western countries dropping support. It's a winnable war for Ukraine, but only if Russia's enemies stay committed.
I don't think there is any actual way that Ukraine is going to beat Russia in any actual sense. They have been losing territory (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682) and Europe is suffering without Russian gas.
I don't have a horse in the race, I just think it's absurd to think you are going to "win" in any sense. Ultimately I think Putin would drop some sort of nuke on the Ukraine before admitting defeat.
Accurate wartime numbers are certainly difficult to get. I'm sure even the Russians and Ukrainians don't have accurate numbers. But I have no trouble believing that the Russians are suffering more casualties. That much seems obvious to all sides. Yes, Russians have taken territory. Ukrainians have also taken some territory back. Again, war isn't a simple matter of who has more troops. There's issues of concentration, supplies, strategic importance, and circumstances on the ground.
And I never said Russia's economy is doing terribly. It did grow. Some fear that it's being propped up by war manufacturing, or is otherwise in a pattern that it can't hold indefinitely, but I don't have enough insight into it. My point was actually to assume that Russia will continue to be able to produce weapons and ammo for the duration of the war, but it could still lose a war of of attrition when it becomes too costly in human lives to continue.
And yes, Putin might nuke Ukraine. The Russians were floating a plan of detonating a single nuke to "shock" Western Europe into fearful inaction. I don't think that will work. If anything, it will only further anti-Russian sentiment and possibly lead to war.
Yes, the West has set and ignored red lines with Russia in the past, to their own detriment. But this will different. If Russia detonates a nuke after failing a military operation that they themselves started, it will show they're not good stewards of a nuclear arsenal. Essentially, they would have proven to the world that they can hold it nuclear hostage to their whims. To not reply in force would throw the MAD doctrine into doubt.
Europe is close to 3x what America has sent now. Less direct military support, but much of the funding buys weapons anyhow.
The US has a ton of mil equipment, built for the European theater, that is sitting in storage. Significant amounts (over half) goes back into replacement with new & upgraded kit for the US Mil
No, you sent lots of things from warehouses that ① originally cost billions to buy and ② have limited shelf life.
You've seen the Patriot missiles that the Ukrainians have used to such good effect. Those were made thirty years ago. They were expensive to make, then. Sending them is a great thing to do, no question about it. But if you want to talk about billions of crrent expenses, then I it's wrong to talk about money spent in the nineties. You should instead think about their replacement cost. You need to replace them now. But how long was their shelf life — would you need to replace them soon anyway?
There's a certain breed of neoliberal commenter that seems to believe that the West is financially and militarily invincible, and can simply spend any colossal amounts of money it wants to wipe strategic opponents from the map at will. I think in many cases it comes from watching too many Marvel movies.
> "freeloading and relying on the U.S. to protect them from everything?"
The US famously has routinely run a billion-dollar deficit in its dues to the UN since the late 1980s through the early 2000s [0][1][2], and then again when Trump suspended paying dues 2016-2020 and owed $2b [3]. In the 1990s, CNN ex-owner Ted Turner even donated part of the dues. US commitment to multilateralism is pretty transactional. (The standoff was not completely resolved by the Helms-Biden Act/"United Nations Reform Act of 1999"), which linked payment of $926 million arrears to a series of reform benchmarks).
This year 18/28 European NATO members will hit the 2% target. They will have to hit 3% or so even if Ukraine holds Russia off [0]. If the tanks roll to Polish and Baltic states borders it will be much more expensive.
Is there anything suggesting Russia was open to that? Given they went straight for Kyiv at the start, their goal was not to modestly expand what they already had.
Or a victim perhaps? Russia seems to have invaded a couple of dozen pawns over the years for looking at them funny or thinking of defending themselves or whatever.
I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this.
His latest tweet connecting the terrorist attack to Ukraine, with no evidence. Is just repeating the Kremlin talking points.
For someone who should analytical, it is just strange.
The All -In pod, often tease him about being a robot.
I genuinely believe he is on the spectrum.
I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.
> I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this.
It's interesting how often this happens. People start from a reasonable premise and then slowly but surely move to an extreme version.
I sometimes think the only way to avoid this kind of derangement is to maintain an attitude of ironic detachment towards politics/current events. Almost everyone I know who deviates from that -- including smart, good people -- is a little bit crazy.
If people were able to do that we wouldn't have e.g. stock market bubbles. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is basically a statement about human nature. Irrational at best of times. Now isn't exactly the best of times, we've been pounded by Covid, the economy, climate, wars. Politics seeks to leverage this irrationality to gain power. Kind of depressing on all fronts.
There are a lot of people in the west that are aligned with the Kremlin talking points. It's sort of a continuation of the post-truth society we live in. It's like people that think Biden isn't president or some other random stuff. Social media and traditional media letting people create their own reality. Reminds me of visiting the US circa 2018 IIRC and flipping my TV between CNN and Fox News.
Interesting enough wasn't it President Obama who started reducing the US involvement and taking more of a home first policy vs. the previous Republicans that viewed the US as the World's Policeman? IMO leaving both the US and the world in a much worse situation. The attacks against Obama also paved the roads to some of the techniques we see used today across the board. I don't know if this is just my impression but it seemed that was an inflection point, along with many other factors, in creating what are essentially fake realities for different people.
> I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.
He is supposedly big fan of Kissinger and Kissinger worked for Nixon who was famously a huge antisemite and also cemented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by intentionally torpedoing the deal that was on the table. All while being holocaust refugee.
He is an example of the current tech mindset. We praise and elevate anyone who makes money. Their genius is in proportion to their wealth. Suggesting they may not be smart, or brilliant, is heresy.
Meanwhile those people believe their own hype and start to share their “insights” in areas far outside any expertise they may have.
Many have very little formal education and haven’t read the books or considered the ideas an average undergraduate has. Due to their success and power almost none are used to having their ideas challenged.
This is exacerbated by the fact they tend to come from backgrounds which made their success much more likely (wealth, support, developed nations, a familial history of education etc) which means they see certain political opinions as “the truth” or “reality” because they aren’t aware of how they affect the world for people outside their bubble.
Sachs is the poster boy, along with Musk, of this. Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview.
>Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview
I've pondered this. I have a theory that the naivety of their position comes from coming from a country a long way from Russia. In Europe a lot of people, maybe most have some relative killed as the result of a Russian invasion or that of their allies.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall...