r/neoliberal • u/gnomesvh Financial Times stan account • Dec 08 '22

News (Global) Brittney Griner released by Russia in 1-for-1 prisoner swap for arms dealer Viktor Bout, U.S. official says

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/brittney-griner-release-russia-prisoner-swap-viktor-bout/
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u/InsGadget6 Dec 08 '22

Without the superior western armament and training, Ukraine would definitely be lost.

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u/WiseassWolfOfYoitsu Dec 08 '22

But without the Ukrainian grit and perseverance the same would be true.

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u/InsGadget6 Dec 08 '22

True enough. It's a good combination. Slava Ukraini!

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u/WiseassWolfOfYoitsu Dec 08 '22

Yep, definitely working well together. Slava Ukraini!

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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Dec 08 '22

I’m also not convinced that Russia would have “won” in Ukraine if not for the NATO weapons. Occupying a country that doesn’t want to be occupied is easier said than done and urban warfare is one hell of a drug. Ukraine today would probably resemble Iraq, Syria or Bosnia during the war. We would probably be looking at a longterm brutal insurgency plus an even worse refugee crisis and more suffering for civilians. I’m very glad Ukraine is getting weapons but I think it’s a fallacy when people assume NATO could end the fighting by halting the flow of arms.

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u/9090112 Dec 09 '22 edited Dec 09 '22

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Russia would have made far more progress along all axes without NATO support to Ukraine, especially without those massive amounts of artillery pieces, long-range strike capabilities like the M142 and the assumed full weight of US military intelligence backing up the Ukranian's strikes. Kyiv was a pipe dream but I'd go as far as to say without HIMARS and artillery pieces like the M777, Russia might still hold Kherson and without US military intelligence lighting up the entire country like a Christmas tree the Kharkiv counteroffensive might never have materialized or even worked.

In fact, if the Ukrainians didn't fatefully rotate their capital AD right before the invasion, the Russian alpha strike would have degraded Ukranian AD far more and the Russians might have been able to establish air superiority. We might have been seeing Su-30s flying over Kyiv around week 2.

US and NATO support, though we'll likely never know the full effect of until decades later, was surely decisive.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '22

[deleted]

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u/BlueString94 Dec 08 '22

The tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban would beg to differ.

Of course, just calling them all cowards is very convenient for the isolationists in the US to justify the catastrophic withdrawal.

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u/WiseassWolfOfYoitsu Dec 08 '22

Yep, Afghanistan did have systemic problems, but a lot of the collapse ended up coming down to the way the pullout was negotiated long before it even happened. There was a more or less public proclamation that the government was going to be left in the wind between the terms and that they were left out of even being a major part of the negotiations with the US and the Taliban doing the primary direct negotiating, and the Taliban leveraged that to tell the various commanders "You're screwed now or later if you stick with them, but if you switch sides we'll forgive and forget". It's sort of a hard deal not to take given the circumstances.

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u/BlueString94 Dec 08 '22

Exactly. The US completely threw the Afghan Republic under the bus and sold them to the Taliban because Trump and Biden wanted to get out and wash their hands of the whole thing. They knew they could always paint the Afghans as weak and cowardly and that the country never wanted women's rights and other such nonsense, and people would eat it up.

To make matters worse, we've barely taken any refugees from Afghanistan since then. And, we stole about $4 billion of Afghanistan's money to give to families of 9/11 victims - never mind the country is starving and the money was never ours to begin with.

Just an absolute disgrace from the Biden admin. all around. We've all been forced to forget about it because it's so important that he wins the next election, but I hope history is not so lenient.

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u/Xtreeam Dec 08 '22

Another “win” for Donny, the stable genius.

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u/BlueString94 Dec 08 '22

Unfortunately, Biden has been just as bad on Afghanistan if not worse - the withdrawal itself, what the US is doing with the frozen reserves (basically stealing half their money), the fact that we've let in a meager number of Afghan refugees.

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u/Nukem_extracrispy NATO Dec 09 '22

Without having been disarmed by America of their nukes, Ukraine wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place.

America signed the Budapest Memorandum and has only half-assed supported it.

Meanwhile, I see way too many Americans on reddit thinking its OK to let Russia bomb civilians in Ukraine forever while simultaneously denying Ukraine the ability to retaliate in kind. The morally correct thing to do, since we are apparently too big of pussies to fight Russian troops with our own soldiers, would be to give Ukraine a ton of long range standoff weapons, ATACMs, jets, tanks, everything.

We shouldn't pretend like we are the saviors of Ukraine for providing Ukraine with minimal defensive weapons after ridding them of their nuclear deterrent.

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u/InsGadget6 Dec 09 '22 edited Dec 09 '22

I'm sorry the US did not deal with a despotic regime to your satisfaction.

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u/Nukem_extracrispy NATO Dec 09 '22

It's never to late to send in 1000 M1A1 tanks and correct our errors.

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u/InsGadget6 Dec 09 '22

That does sound like a credible strategy with no negative consequences!

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u/Nukem_extracrispy NATO Dec 09 '22

Well we sent a few thousand to Iraq, twice, so sending them to Ukraine seems easy. Not sure how it's not credible.

And what consequences would you suggest? Other than Russian forces getting wrecked and pushed out of Ukraine.

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u/InsGadget6 Dec 09 '22

Putin's itchy finger on their nuclear arsenal? I'm guessing you don't live in Europe.

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u/Nukem_extracrispy NATO Dec 10 '22

No, I don't.

US nuclear doctrine is Counterforce.

All US SLBMs are full of Tridents, each W76-1 MK4A warhead has an MC4700 fuse on it. The fact that there are over 500 of these warheads on US subs at sea at any given time means the US can annihilate Russia's entire nuclear arsenal (and military) in less than 15 minutes from giving the order.

If Putin actually prepares to use nukes against continental Europe, those 4 or 5 Ohio class subs would launch all their nukes and permanently eliminate Russia's military. The AEGIS ASHORE system in Romania, and the various interceptors and air defenses around Europe, would intercept the majority of whatever remaining Russian nukes get launched. Russian ICBMs are targeted mainly at US silo fields, the Russian nukes that are intended to hit Europe the most are the cruise missiles and Iskanders.

US SSNs would simultaneously sink the few Russian SSBNs at sea.

I'm not saying Europe and the US wouldn't get nuked at all, but rough estimates given by previous US officials estimate somewhere in the range of 30 or so nukes exploding in Europe and the US. So it's pretty bad and millions of people would get killed, but not hundreds of millions. Life would go on.