**** him. My attitude towards pressing Putin is

Google "escalate to de-escalate" - if things don't go to plan this may be the next play :/

Juk

This is a super interesting analysis from the situation 3-4 months ago:

https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/fe...rmy-logistics/

Juk

Hence the reason tactical nukes worry me. If he uses a 3-5kt weapon are we really going to escalate and risk him being crazy enough to push a button and kill 100's of millions. I really don't know what our play would be and seems like best option for them.

Thanks for the excellent read.

Scary. Putin bet. Now the world is 2 betting. "Escalate to de-escalate" from Putin is a 3 bet. No way in heck we don't 4 bet him. A fifth bet from Putin - and he definitely is capable of doing it - is probably an all-in for all of humanity. A 6 and 7 bet is human extinction.

China deserting Putin and becoming a good guy could stop the 3 bet.

If this articles' predictions are correct; a large proportion of the 40 mile convoy of trucks heading into Ukraine now is to resupply the rocket artillery... :/

On one hand I can't see the Ukrainians lasting long against this amount of firepower, but on the other hand this sort of tactic has never really worked very well historically?

Juk

World War III will Begin Before the World Series of Poker Main Event


Putin likes to escalate each time he gets beat. He started with surgical strikes....got embarassed....now he's escalating to deliberately targeting civilians.....

....what's next?

We already know he does not value human life including those of his own soldiers.

What is next?

Escalation is THE Putin strategy. I suspect he may be losing on purpose in order to justify escalalation.

Escalation means Nuclear War.

Putin knows that in a true heads-up with the West, he will lose, not just territory, but his life. I have seen no indication that Putin is interested in becoming a martyr for Russia.

What indication do you have either that he is so interested or that the West will shrug off a nuclear strike?

If Putin is a disciplined and calculated gto player, then there is nothing to fear. On the otherhand, if, as some have observed, he has lost his discipline and calculatedness because of the covid isolation that they say may be causing him to be a "mad man" then there could be nuclear danger.

In addition, if the 'escalate to de-escalate' doctrine which has been referred to in earlier posts has indeed been embraced by Putin then a failure on his part to capture Kyiv could lead him to unleash tactical nuclear on them...even if he remains disciplined and calculated.

Convoy rhymes with DECOY.

Nah.

They've been moving a lot of the tracked vehicles on their own engines, which takes a large toll on parts and requires massive amount of fuel. Basically, they have failed to supply enough of either.

It's poor planning and logistics, not a decoy. Russian doctrine on the ground is the same as in the old days; momentum and pushing the attack. The Russian forces simply haven't trained enough to be able to run the required logistics.

Ultimately it doesn't matter all that much tactically for those specific units, since the Ukrainian ability to counter-attack or organize large-scale maneuvers seems to be gone (doesn't mean they can't defend well, but they'll be operating as independent units), so it is mostly just costing them time.

Of course, political and diplomatic costs are a whole other ballgame.

There has been no Putin Mindset Analyst that has said that Putin would not double down each time he experiences setback. They all say he tends to double down.

Also, no Putin Mindset Analyst has said that Putin valued human life, including his own troops and Russian citizens.

You add the two and it looks like Putin will probably be employing tactical nuclear weapons by the second week of April. You heard it here first. Escalate to de-escalate.

April 14, 2022 is Nuke-Day. The conventional warfare setbacks Putin will have experienced by this date would be to unbearable.

How the heck NATO is gonna respond is beyond me.

What about China? I have a hard time imagining their recent pact didn't contain the assurance from Putin that he wouldn't attack US or NATO forces. Granted, they probably wouldn't mind seeing our reaction and resolve when dealing with Russia's military power but there's zero chance they'll go down with the Russian economic ship, which would happen if they're providing aid to our enemy.

I don't think China would be concerned with 'going down with the Russian ship' if they took advantage and bought up a ton of Russian assets at fire sale prices. China is playing a very long game here. A generational game. And locking in much of these assets will help greatly in their ambitions.


China pushing state-owned firms to buy Russian oil, gas metals assets

- Beijing is in talks with state-owned enterprises "SOEs" regarding opportunities to scoop up Russian companies and assets, according to Bloomberg.

- The news comes on the back of European and US firms announcing exits from Russian holdings, including BP's (NYSE:BP) sale of Rosneft (OTCPK:RNFTF), Exxon's (NYSE:XOM) exit from Sakhalin, and Shell's (NYSE:SHEL) exit from a series of assets and joint ventures.

- China's foreign minister Wang Yi said earlier this week that China-Russia ties remain "rock solid."

- It was previously reported that Rosneft (OTCPK:RNFTF) was a likely bidder for BP's (BP) ~20% equity stake in the Russian producer.

- Western companies are in a difficult position, facing social and investor pressure to divest from Russia; selling assets at reduced prices to Russia does little to help investors, help Ukraine or hurt Russia; with China emerging as a likely buyer, it will be interesting to see if asset prices rise or Western companies re-think exit strategies.

I don't know where China / Russia alliance is going to go. But I do know that when China did their nuclear classroom drills back in the day, they feared Soviet missiles as much, if not more, than western ones. That was only decades after international displays of "unity" between the two countries.

Still, the diplomatic efforts between the countries for the last decades have been very real and polls have shown how their populations have steadily gained more positive views regarding each-other. That's a factor that should not be ignored.

But I refute the perspective that this is some Chinese master-plan. The Chinese statements after the first pictures of the invasion were coming were clearly made to fit Russian involvement in the breakaway regions, not a WW2-style invasion into the Ukrainian heartland. I'm certain they were caught off-guard. Their gamble was probably more a type of Russian involvement in Ukraine where there was far more lack of clarity, and where it would be much easier to cast doubts on countries uniting diplomatically against Russia.

While we'll never hear about it, the party never makes mistakes after all, a lot of heads are probably rolling. It does seem like they'll take the road of "quiet support" and pick up some political and economical influence along the way, but I don't think the idea of tying yourself too much to an unpredictably aggressive nation is all that appealing. The best foreign policy currency is, as it has always been, stability.

The assessments that were undoubtedly correct were actually the US ones. And that's even after the US made them public and gave Russia the option of not attacking and making the US look like idiots (which was a bold move, but a good one). A US back on the world stage actually giving good advice is a welcome tack of change, what remains to be seen now is if it survives internal American political division.

mentioned this earlier but i attended a zoom talk a week before and the ceos of a few chinese multinational companies spoke and this was a trending topic so it came up and they were adamant that none of their economic forecasts included possibility of a war and they thought the west was blowing things out of proportion citing not even the ukrainians thought there'd be a war - which was largely true for the general population - seemed at worst it'd be russia intervening in donbas

Yeah, I saw that a post. I meant to reply to it, but the thread moved along so fast then. It was a very interesting observation.

I'm no expert on China, but my layman take is that the currency they really want to offer diplomatically is to be stable or "harmonious". "We'll deal, you can trust us if I can trust you. I'll leave your internal politics alone and you'll leave my internal politics alone." Delivering that well is, perhaps somewhat ironically, a really good way of gaining massive influence.

Given that is what I think, I don't see them going to bat for Russia anytime soon in any kind of dramatic way. Especially given that Russia is coming off as anything but stable right about now.

Putin levels of escalation:

Level 1 - Surgical Strikes

Level 2 - Conventional weapons against civilian targets

Level 3 - Chemical and Biological Weapons

Level 4 - Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Level 5 - World War III

Level 1 got cancelled within the first 3 days. We have been at level 2 since. The pattern is that failure triggers the move to the next level. Very predictable. Hopefully, Putin gets overthrown before level 3, which he could decide to order before the end of March.

I have big plans this summer so I hope you're wrong

Just so this thread doesn't end up purely about Ukraine, how about some book suggestions?

A couple from me:

Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age

The Art of War in Western World

and just about the start reading this:

Future Wars: The World's Most Dangerous Flashpoints

Trevor Dupuy wrote a lot of other interesting books, but this looks especially relevant for current times!

(I'm also interested in combat modeling and wargames / wargame design, but that's not really for this thread).

Juk

Stategy by Liddell Hart

Here is a summary of the chapter "The Concentrated Essence of Strategy and Tactics"

Before you read the whole book, check out the above chapter summary first. Good and relevant read.

Thanks - I've ordered a copy.

It looks like Putin also read that summary and decided to do the exact opposite!

Juk

Ides of March today. Time for Putin's Brutus to pop up.

During WWII Japan invaded China. The U.S. supported Chiang Kai Chek by giving him weapons and support to drive out Japan. It worked. Yay....victory!!!!

Then Mao Tse Tung beats Chiang Kai Check, driving him out of China and into the island called Formosa - which was renamed Taiwan.

The problem was that when Mao beat Chiang, all of the U.S. weapons were left in China and became Mao's. Oops!!!

Fast forward to the Russia/Ukraine conflict:

If and when Putin is driven out, there are going to be lots of Javelin Anti Tank weapons and Switchblade Kamikaze drones left everywhere, in addition to possibly tens and thousands of units of a whole lot of other weapons contributed by NATO. All expensive.

Javelin's are $175,000 per piece. Switchblade Kamikaze's are $6,000 a piece. These things along with grenades, all types of launchers, ammos, rifles will be all over Ukraine.

What's to prevent enterprising Ukrainians from smuggling them to African dictators, the Taliban, drug cartels, etc. and making a quick buck or even starting a world class arms dealing businesses? What, also, could stop extremists and non-extremist militias inside Ukraine from turning weapons against each other trying to be mini-Mao Tse Tung's or even real Mao's?

Uh, oh!!!

I think NATO should begin to worry about this.

The issue the 'enterprising Ukrainians' will bump into is all the competition from US and other arms brokers already selling to them all.