If Russia’s current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt.
This gave me an interesting thought. Either Putin thinks retreating is deadly for him or not. If he does he will keep sending more forces to be steadily destroyed. If he doesn’t retaking Crimea wouldn’t trigger nuclear response by default as he will hope to conquer it again later.
I’m so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power. But the price is artificially prolonging the conflict or increased nuclear risk in Ukraine. Which is why I said prolonging the conflict looks like a better option.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting. I know more than one person who donated significant amounts of money to the army. A vibe I’m getting from many is victory at any cost. Ironically once I had difficulty convincing one Ukrainian why NATO can’t be more involved.
Polls say that only around 10% of Ukrainians think that Ukraine should hold peace talks with Russia. Even after conventional rocket showers 80+% say that Ukraine should keep fighting. Also Ukraine would in a different situation than Japan. If Putin orders a nuclear strike it would mean Ukraine is otherwise winning. So morale would be super-high among Ukrainians. Unlike losing Japan in 1945.
Another thing to consider is that the first use of nuclear weapons was a shock to everyone. Many Ukrainians understand the fact that they can be nuked. Though about 2⁄3 (according to another poll) still don’t believe Russia is capable of actually ordering a nuclear strike.
If you think about it Mariupol could be even worse than a nuclear explosion. Tens of thousands dead but waiting for their fate for many weeks without much water and food, hiding from bombs, seeing familiar faces lying dead on the streets, constantly being in terror. This didn’t stop Ukrainians.
There is a lesswrong post that describes a subtle way Russia destroys lives of its own people. Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
Seeing a mushroom cloud can easily change public opinion but it’s far from obvious that Ukraine would just give up.
So Putin “wins”, and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
Well, the obvious historical analogy is there. And if you plot size (by some appropriate metric) of the wars Putin was involved in so far my guess is there would be something resembling an exponential curve.
In December 2021 Putin openly demanded that NATO returns all former Soviet republics to Russia. The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries). The implied threat was “or else I invade Ukraine”. NATO hadn’t budged. Putin went on to invade Ukraine. If one takes Putin’s words seriously one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans to get all former Soviet republics under his rule.
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don’t you? To restate—the siege of Mariupol didn’t stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
We’re afraid he may start a nuclear war. That’s pretty bad already. And he clearly gets worse with time. Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
Actions speak. I know Ukrainians who were hiding from military enlistment officers for years in relatively peaceful years. I tried to give them advice how to hide from mobilization during the invasion. But they just stopped hiding.
I shared both strong and weak evidence. I didn’t initially think that it’s gonna be a debate… If I treated this like a debate I could say something like: “Putin never said that he’s gonna use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. On the contrary, he said he’s not going to use nukes in Ukraine. Therefore there’s nothing to worry about.” But I’m not saying it.
Look, the point is Putin lied so many times about not being involved in Ukraine. He lied about not intending to start a full scale invasion. Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.