this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Its sad that we don't get to see them admit defeat, they just stop reporting on it and hope people will forget it after a while. Like they still haven't admitted failure in VZ with Guaido.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They haven't given up on trying to regime change Venezuela. Or any other country that stands in the way of their neoliberal hegemony, Syria, Cuba, DPRK, Iran, and especially Russia and China. They will never admit defeat on any front because they will never stop trying until they themselves are finally defeated.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Like that line from Kyle Reese in Terminator: "He will never stop hunting you".

Or like w/ real-time-strategy games: even if you leave the AI opponent just one unit left, it never gives up, and will spend days building back what it once had to kill you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Or like w/ real-time-strategy games: even if you leave the AI opponent just one unit left, it never gives up, and will spend days building back what it once had to kill you.

Even RTS bots are better than this now, most games since like SC2 the bots will surrender when it becomes unwinnable.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Many still won’t accept it, but Ukraine have been abandoned

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Unless the Americans protest against funding Ukraine, they're unlikely to be abandoned soon.The MIC of the US is profiting. What better way to siphon money away from the people than sustaining a war?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

The size of the packages being sent now is only a fraction of what it was last year. The reality is that the MIC in US is simply unable to produce artillery shells anywhere close to the rate they're being used at. This is primarily an artillery war of attrition and the west is not able to keep up.

When they were getting the Ukrainian offensive going, US had to pull shells from Israel and South Korea already. This was supposed to be the big breakthrough for Ukraine, and NATO threw everything they had into it. Now that the offensive fizzled, there's really nothing else to be done.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

The money they are making comes from lend lease and similar, they're planning on gutting Ukraine and installing harsh austerity measures to pay for it all once the war is over. But once the amount Ukraine owes is more than the west thinks they can actually make back, they'll stop supporting them. It becomes a bad investment.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

they were led astray since the coup tbh

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ukraine will fall this year, due to the loss of NATO material support

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That along with running out of trained soldiers. People are even harder to replace than equipment.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

haven't they been asking citizens abroad to come back to fight?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Yup, and European countries might actually start deporting Ukrainians back too. However, that wouldn't actually solve the problem. You can't just grab a person off the street, shove a gun in their hands, and get an effective and motivated soldier. The problem Ukraine has is that it lost much of its experienced and motivated core of the military. That's what's holding the whole army together.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

That's an optimistic prediction. I think the support is decreasing but i don't see it going away entirely. As for how long the conflict will drag on that depends on how long Russia decides it wants it to drag on. If they were looking to end it this year they probably could but they may be calculating that NATO and US hegemony will be damaged more severely by a longer Ukraine conflict. Looking at the overall economic and military trajectories of Russia and the West that does seem to be the case. But because the West have no good way out of it they will continue to pour resources that they desperately need elsewhere into the Ukraine black hole. This is to the advantage of the entire global south and opens up a lot of opportunities to score even more victories against the West and its proxies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wonder what the comparative "costs" are for each side. If the west is only wagering Ukrainian lives, and its older military surplus, then it could end up being more of a drain on Russia (in lives and military expenditure) than on western governments.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Russia's armed forces are now bigger, better armed and more experienced than when the conflict started. Its military industries are in high gear and its civilian economy has actually been helped by the sanctions to start producing more domestically rather than relying on western imports. Unemployment is at an all time low in Russia.

Meanwhile most of the West is entering into a long term recession. It has been largely unable to ramp up military production despite the political promises to do so, and it is running out of surplus to send. The US is already looking for a way to extricate itself out of this trap so that they can focus on other more important fronts, but i'm not sure that they can.

They would like to shift the whole thing onto the Europeans but even some of their most loyal lackeys in Europe seem reticent to continue supporting Ukraine if the US pulls out. And i see no way to make it politically feasible to simply cease all support for Ukraine, that would be an even more humiliating defeat than their pullout from Afghanistan.

For now they are stuck with Ukraine. And the conflict in the Middle East is also going very badly for them. Their empire has never been more overextended and more vulnerable than it is now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If NATO is no longer giving them material support, how will the war damage NATO? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

As i said, i do not believe that NATO will stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. They may deliver less and less as time goes on, but they can't just stop completely. They have trapped themselves politically and psychologically.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Lmao this is spot on