Last year's Predictions compo invited short essays on Ukraine. I largely ducked this one but there was a very decent effort by Caesar H, including:
Trump comes up with a Big Deal that makes sense to him, Zelensky signs off on it begrudgingly, Putin doesn't. Trump, having paper thin skin, takes this badly ... by year end some of Russia's gains will have reversed, and there'll still be an embedded Ukrainian presence in Russia, and Trump will start suggesting giving them nukes in response to Russia's usual bellicosity about using them. Think of the geopolitical version of "I offered you a way out asshole, you slapped my hand away, so I'm going to crush your nuts until you cry like a little bitch". I expect this theory to disproven by February of course
Putting aside the nukes bit, it was actually a very fine prediction. Putin seemed at first to be playing a decent hand with Trump, but his early political gains have been squandered (does anyone really know how to play Trump? Even Netanyahu?). I believe Ukr still holds a few square meters of Russian soil to this day; and although none of Russia's gains as of Jan 2025 have been reversed, several of their advances during 2025 have indeed been reversed - though the definition of "advances" changed during the year**.
I have no idea what the collective western brainpower around the most recent "coalition of the willing" table thinks they've come up with this week. They all know, for 100% certain - even, or perhaps especially Witless, who's had several lengthy in-person lectures from L'il Volodya - that the idea of NATO boots on the ground / air patrols in Ukr airspace are an absolute Red Line for Putin, despite the endless red lines of his that the west calmly breezed through in 2022 / 23 / 24.
Is it a Cunning Plan? Designed to get a wholly predictable 'Неt' that will enrage the Orange One? If so, the parallel Venezuela adventure is reinforcing the C-Plan nicely, forcing Putin to eat more shit as he is lamely reduced to asking that his tanker crew will be nicely looked after. What a piece of serendipity that is! Yep, lots of random shit happens on Planet Trump.
I don't have a conclusion on Ukraine right now, because a massive and fairly binary pivot-point looms (and of course may fade away again, as have several before). Just a few observations:
- while there's still nothing to stop Putin having what he wants in terms of the Donbas (as I've said all along), he doesn't seem willing to pay the price (or at very least is understandably reluctant), and still hopes to get it on a plate via a 1-1 with Trump
- the only possible way he'll get more than just the Donbas (in terms of territory or in any other dimension) is also from Trump
- once again, both Russia and Xi are utterly dismayed, as ever, by the casual ease with which perfidious western nations sweep away years and even decades of patient strategic effort: this time Venezuela, the latest in a long series
ND
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** Russia has more-or-less given up on even small-scale armoured thrusts (they all get eliminated piecemeal), or even the motorbike / quad-bike "dragoon" charges of 2024, settling instead for a pretty feeble doctrine of "infiltration on foot in 2s and 3s". Sometimes this is genuine recce, but mostly it is simply for the sake of probing, and often for no more than raising a flag, having a quick photo taken by a drone, then the job's done, the map is updated, and nobody in the Russian command much cares for the subsequent fate of the probers.
On this last point, honest Russian milboggers are incensed by the endemic Russian practice of over-claiming territorial gains, in what they call "beautiful reports" from lower echelons to higher command and even to Putin himself. They observe that "victories on credit" frequently result in carnage for the troops on the ground: they are either ordered to "make the maps true" by hurriedly and suicidally advancing into the falsely-claimed territory, and/or having resources taken away because, their having already "gained their objective", they no longer need them. They also observe that promotions and medals are frequently awarded on the basis of "beautiful reports" alone.
13 comments:
"both Russia and Xi are utterly dismayed, as ever, by the casual ease with which perfidious western nations sweep away years and even decades of patient strategic effort"
But is that a Good Thing? To be fair, Trump is going back to the days when United Fruit and Chiquita ran the "banana republics", so it's not a new policy.
My assumption has always been that Xi and China generally play a long strategic game, as does the entire Far East. Hence the fact that neither the US or UK can actually BUILD a large oil tanker any more, rusty or not. But China have always been content to sit back and watch the West decline - after all, only ten years ago they were going to build our nuclear power and our phone switching. They want to put off the inevitable confrontation for as long as possible so the West gets weaker and weaker.
China must be delighted with Europe/UK post-NS2, slowly dying for lack of energy. But if, as seems likely, TrumpIsrael's next move is Iran, that's two fuel sources pinched in very short order and perhaps time to unload their Treasuries and turn the dollar into rubble. I can easily see this going nuclear, not good for people living on an overcrowded island that only grows half its food.
“… unload their Treasuries” klaxon alert!
You were almost making sense up until that point (granted, I did have to gloss over the “a lack of energy” silliness).
No-one who makes that comment gets to exit the Clown Car until they’ve explained how, should China “unload their Treasuries”, to whom are they supposed to sell them to, and in exchange for what, exactly?
You're right, Clive, there's actually plenty of energy, but at a price UK manufacturing can't afford.
I'd unload the treasuries at a low price in exchange for oil....
As China is, belatedly, discovering, there’s a high cost of low prices as you learn that friends in far-away places who supply you with energy in exchange for, erm, other favours might not actually be there for you in the long term. Certainty you might need to make alternative arrangements, which take a while to set up and are not nearly on such advantageous terms, more-or-less overnight as iron-fist regimes which appeared immutable turn out to be not quite as immutable as you anticipated.
And to be fair to China, it does see the risks it is running in terms of energy security and is ramping up renewables at an impressive rate. Just like the UK and most of Europe, then.
I see! So instead of paying for oil in dollars, it pays for the oil in Treasuries which are… wait for it… denominated in dollars! Oh, and it’s asking suppliers to take payment in a currency which it is supposed to be devaluing and expecting the same suppliers to say, oh well never mind then?
And China imports around $350bn in oil per year. So it will “only” take 12 years to burn their stock of Treasuries.
Where did you go to business school? I’d ask for a refund, if I were you.
That's an interesting interpretation Clive, I suppose that's why Chamberlain's Polish alliance was such a bad idea - and the French one too!
"Just like the UK and most of Europe, then"
No. Because their prices are much much cheaper. China are currently burning two thirds of the worlds (record) coal consumption, btw
Which neatly illustrates how China faces the same trilemma as everyone else does — you can tweak any one energy security, energy-production pollution and energy costs — but you can’t escape the iron triangle. Burn more coal and you improve energy security and energy costs, but you kill, as China does, hundreds of thousands of your people through premature deaths resulting from respiratory diseases each year (and impair economic performance by forcing people in cities to say indoor for weeks at a time when you get dangerous smog / PM2.5 in cities).
You can tackle pollution from energy, but that costs.
You can tackle energy security, but that costs too and may rely on even worse pollution sources of energy than you currently use.
Even China wants to wean itself off coal https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.918 but is addicted to the “growth at any cost” mercantilism model. If people die as a result, well, I guess they die. Anyone who lauds one single pillar of the energy triangle (like costs) while ignoring one or both of the other pillars, is being, stated charitably, economical with the truth.
OT, comment pinched from elsewhere
I have been reading The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark, about the path to World War I. The description of Wilhelm II's erratic approach to foreign policy is blackly entertaining. The Kaiser endlessly issued bright ideas as policy proposals: one week an alliance with this country or that, next week against it, new colonies now in Brazil, now in Mesopotamia, now in China. He allowed jokes and extravagant remarks to go public, demanding and offering what was not in his gift. At different times he commissioned plans for the invasion of New York, offered Theodore Roosevelt a German army to be stationed in California, and wrote him a fan letter so embarrassingly star-struck that his ambassador refused to deliver it. Only one thing was consistent, a conviction that Germany was hard done by in the then international order. It somehow struck a chord.
From the book ...
"Draga was ten years older than the king, unpopular with Belgrade society, widely believed to be infertile and well known for her allegedly numerous sexual liaisons. During a heated meeting of the Crown Council, when ministers attempted in vain to dissuade the king from marrying Mašin, the interior minister Djordje Genčić came up with a powerful argument: ‘Sire, you cannot marry her. She has been everybody’s mistress – mine included.’ The minister’s reward for his candour was a hard slap across the face."
Good to know my crystal ball isn't entirely duff!
The post-war understanding has, much like Hemingway's view on bankruptcy, collapsed slowly, then quickly.
I could go through a list a la Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", but the cliff notes are:
- if you outsource your defence, don't expect to exert any influence when their views on getting it done diverge from yours.
- if you think you're the good guys, stick to watching Westerns
- if you don't defend your civilisation from internal harms, don't be too surprised if the barbarians at the gates turn out to be your own citizenry.
- ivory towers aren't much protection from reality's trebuchets heaving dense and weighty issues at you.
Now I don't think Ukraine is going to be resolved until Putin's facing the real prospect of economic damage he can't wish away, and there's an argument that Russia can't move from a war economy, the change having such an impact, so even then maybe he'll keep going in the hope something comes up. Maybe a deal can be made, a few trillion dollars heading towards Russia with western businesses making out with bandits in return for peace and Ukraine's ascension to the EU and some new defensive grouping that has a lot of NATO members, but isn't actually NATO.
As for us putting troops on the ground, well, Starmer has his get out of jail free card by having it go through Parliament. A free vote of conscience?
We're in a potential new Age of Empires anyway, and governments need to quickly get on board with either you're the roaster or the roastee. And if Greenland does get taken by force, Iceland (a lot of water) and the UK/Ireland are potentially next in line, allowing full projection across the North Atlantic, and a beachhead in Europe.
Greenland a giant mine, Iceland processing via hydrothermal power, Scotland a land of the managers overseeing those and with plenty of Trump golf courses for their free time. Wales a giant Tolkein-esque theme park. And England, Slough scaled up. Bigly nightmare!
If only the UK was annexed by the US and run as a vassel state. Be significantly better than the shower of shite in Westminster are doing...
Only the USA is rich enough to afford the horribly incompetent, wasteful, and corrupt government that it normally labours under.
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