“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :) Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.
“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :)
Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.