@ACIN

Yes, but how many skilled and brave and committed democrats are there in the ruling classes of military Myanmar, monarchic Thailand, Communist Vietnam, technocratic Singapore, Duterte's Philippines, and the like? Australia and Japan can hold out for a while, because they're big and rich and geographically insulated and have a strong history of democracy, but the rest?

Taiwan is pretty democratic now, but it's also the single most vulnerable country in Asia to outright occupation and annexation by China. China can try to bully South Korea, buy Mongolia and Nepal, but the foremost candidate for the deployment of China's ballooning defense budget is Taiwan. Death by a thousand inches you know, and once it happens there's no more going back than there is restoring Crimea or 'removing Zionist'.

Quote Originally Posted by spmetla View Post
Exactly, it's one of the reasons I though Obama 'weak' in response to the Crimean invasion. Instead of using it as a lever to reinvigorate collective European defense and gain bargaining chips by using the invasion as a reason to reverse the draw down in Germany and perhaps restart the ballistic missile defense plans in Eastern Europe. Not to mention it could have be used to show the vulnerability of Western Europe to Russian energy supplies and sell more US natural gas. The sanctions hurt Russia but having another 'frozen conflict' in Eastern Europe is fine for Russia but terrible for Ukraine. Crimea will remain Russian unless someone is willing to fight Russia for it and even I think that a terrible stupid idea when Ukraine scarcely tried to retain it.


Of course, but we need to think what does he consider a benefit? It's surely not just economic or the sanctions would have worked. He has already made his mark on history by the rebirth of Russia's relevance in the world post USSR collapse. He has stopped the Eastward spread of NATO to countries like Georgia or Ukraine. He seemingly has a puppet or at least an admirer as the POTUS who is doing his apparent best to break up NATO and the EU. His moves haven't been good for the Russian economy but from the diplomatic and military views they have been beneficial to him.
In the possible scenario that one day Russia tanks roll into Riga in order to protect Russian citizens from 'fascist nazi loving Latvians' what would NATO do? https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/e...tvia-1.5912476
With the disorder in the West with Trump, Brexit and African and Muslim migrants crisis it is very possible that nothing is done. More sanctions, more fist shaking but the possibility that NATO would not go to war to defend one of its smallest allies if the threat is an actual world power and thereby be the end of NATO as a credible deterrence.
Sanctions alone rarely achieve the collapse of the target. Did Showtime post it in the Trump thread or did I see it elsewhere that sanctions accomplished their purpose less than a third of the time in the 20th century? They're better understood as a single tool to be used in conjunction with others, not a knockout blow. Sanctions have constrained Russia, but they probably can't force capitulation under any circumstances.

It would be a mistake to think that because Putin is a dictator he has much more freedom to maneuver than an elected executive; the internal politics of Russia matter a lot. Don't try to pin foreign affairs on the ego of "great men", an ego that may or may not exist as the storybooks imagine it. His interest is in keeping the world open to Russian commodities and neutralizing the ability of competitors to maintain an active and adversarial foreign policy (e.g. through political disruption). And supporting a proxy in eastern Ukraine is certainly costly and inconvenient, Putin would prefer not to do this indefinitely. Ukrainian and Russian heavy industry and manufacturing, for example, are (were?) largely symbiotic following their shared Soviet lineage. Meanwhile, supporting ORDLO must be a serious drain. Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine is then slightly analogous to the Euro-American sanctions regime against Russia as a double-edged sword.

Russian tanks in Riga: if it happens, it will be in order to fulfill a need - such as intense domestic pressure to invade (unlikely), or a gambit to deal a death blow to the American order/transatlantic alliance (many harmful knock-ons for Russia). Western decline would have to be much further along for such a thing to slip below risk thresholds, or something else dire, in which case we're in no position to be pondering military solutions anymore. And if all that is true, why would Russia even need to invade to impose its interests? There are so many interlocking elements here. Like everything I guess. In 2017 I made a mistake in underestimating the military intractability of the Korean theater. No matter how the cards have fallen or will fall, the cost of dramatic escalation is always too high for both sides unless the other is already playing for the endgame (I don't play cards).

A more likely, evergreen scenario is one in which Putin cows, buys, or recruits a Baltic government such that they leave NATO, or otherwise become a Russian-aligned client like Belarus. How we might react to that is more worth ruminating than "Fulda Fucktards" 2.0.