> The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4 days
I think the West expected better but not lot better, it does seem that was about what Russia expected (possibly on bad political intelligence on how the population would respond to an invasion.)
>This only makes the current war that started in 2014 even dumber
Not sure about this.
US had been meddling with Russia using Ukraine as base, and the 2014 ousting of the Ukraine Prez at the time was only made worse by the US and EU flaming the issue.
Not saying the war was necessary, but given the large number of times US has been involved in regime changes of various countries (using this Modus Operandi of supporting protesters), taking back control of a region they used to govern (as USSR) is not something absurd to consider.
> I am merely saying that a bit disingenuous to suggest that...countries...are under any risk of Russian invasion. Ukraine might be; but even that doesn't seem all that likely.
The risk of Russia invading the Ukraine is 100%, because it already happened. The Russians even annexed part of it, to worldwide condemnation.
> Russia has similar severe demographics. Zeihan predicted in 2014 that they would invade the rest of Ukraine around the end of 2021, because if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower. This is the first of many trade-disrupting conflicts he expects.
"if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower" isn't really a reason to invade Ukraine. It's a reason to invade before waiting to long if you already have decided to invade for another reason. In 2014 lots of people were predicting Russia would come back at some point. Does he have a unique take on a more underlying reason for the conflict in the first place? That would be more telling in terms of predicting further global breakdown.
> Because most analysis on this since Russia took Crimea in 2014 have predicated that Russia would make further attempts at capturing Ukrainian territory.
That’s very much untrue.
It was hard for experts to form a solid opinion after the Crimean invasion. It had some characteristics which the current one doesn’t have which made it rational from a realpolitik point of view.
The invasion had a clear strategic benefit: keeping access to Sevastopol, came at a time when the relationship between Russia and Ukraine was quickly shifting and was made easier by the complicated relationship between Crimea and Ukraine.
> Assisting Ukraine was a surefire way to start a conflict with Russia. Putin warned an invasion would be the result of NATO expansion. The US ignored the warning and shutdown diplomacy with Russia. This left Russia with no alternative but military force.
Interesting comment because NATO never accepted Ukraine as a member or even gave them a MAP, hell even Germany promised Putin before he invaded that Ukraine would never be in NATO, that didn’t do anything.
The quickly deleted Russian victory article also doesn’t mention NATO at all either.
I think it’s far more likely that this has more to do with Russias and more bluntly Putins want to recreate the USSR and imperialism.
I mean the Russian victory article does talk about how Ukraines independence was a mistake and how they have corrected that “mistake”.
>it was only ever a theory, and one that’s becoming increasingly outdated with each passing day that Russia remains in Ukraine.
This seems like a bit of a silly point, given that the war in Ukraine is, at least so far, nothing compared to the conflicts of the past. Do we wanna rush head first back into something that reliably produced worse conflicts than we see today simply because what we have going now isn't perfect?
>Germany’s dependence on Russian gas is now limiting its ability to respond to a crisis. They’ve handicapped themselves and can no longer promote peace and in fact are funding a war.
A bunch of western companies are pulling out of Russia over this and it looks like the whole thing is going worse for the aggressors here than they expected. I'll take this over Germany and Russia engaging directly in armed conflict.
> he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO
NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now, when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so.
A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame for the fact that its neighbors are terrified of Russia violating their territorial integrity and want to run as fast as possible from its sphere of influence.
> That's the kind of thesis a 10 year old comes up with for a history paper the night before its due.
Putin has fairly literally said that, including in his speech immediately after the commencement of the 2022 escalation. Oh, sure, he also stated all the other justifications that his propaganda drones rotate between about NATO expansion in its neighborhood (which is really only a problem because it is a barrier to the expansionist fantasy), and Ukraine not being a real country (which is ultimately just a different spin on the imperial dream, when you think about it).
> All indications immediately before the invasion were that Ukraine would get steam rolled and NATO would look impotent.
I assume you mean the 2022 escalation, and not the invasion starting the war in 2014, but in any case Russia steamrolling Ukraine would have been worse for Ukrained, clearly, but it would have even more vividly demonstrated the threat to Russia's near neighbors of not having a strong alliance with deployed forces and strong commitment.
erm based on what? Poland was overrun in a month. By the Germans + Soviets. Here Russia is blundering about for 1 year and hasn't managed to capture 4 provinces, forget abt the whole country. And the Germans aren't exactly falling over themselves running to the front to fight. There is no real comparison with ww2.
The threat of Russia to the EU has actually reduced, compared to last year, given how massively they have blundered. Even if they capture the 4 regions they are going to take a long time to recover their strength.
> The risk of Russia invading the Ukraine is 100%, because it already happened. The Russians even annexed part of it, to worldwide condemnation.
Oh, I meant in the future. The risk of lightning striking the same house, as it were. Admitting a historically conflicted piece of territory whose population at the time is reported to have been overwhelmingly pro-russian and to have felt slighted by the anti-russian revolutionary government, and which even went through the perfunctory motions of a referendum to add some semblance of legitimacy to the process, is a fairly confusing case, for which, of course, Russia has its own exculpatory narrative. I was thinking of something more clear-cut. A declaration of war, an open military confrontation, that sort of thing.
> Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine
Plenty of people believed that Russia would launch a major invasion as part of their war with Ukraine launched in 2014. As a general concern it was raised many times by many people during the period after 2014, and that went into overdrive in the months before the actual invasion.
The article you linked was written after Russia had already invaded and annexed part of Ukraine, so it's not a very impressive prediction.
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