David Rothkopf: The World Needs to Prepare for a Long Ukraine War

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-world-needs-to-prepare-for-a-long-ukraine-war


As the war in Ukraine approaches the two-week mark, it is increasingly clear that we are unprepared for many of the challenges that now seem likely—the greatest of which are associated with the ever-growing possibility that this conflict stretches out for many more weeks, months or perhaps even years.

President Biden’s announcement that the U.S. would ban imports of Russian oil and his advocacy for a $12 billion package of aid for Ukraine, underscored that as the conflict continues on, its impacts will be grow, not just for the heroic citizens of Ukraine but for average Americans who might have weeks ago considered the conflict remote and unlikely to touch their daily lives.

As Biden’s remarks illustrated, it is time for Ukraine and its friends in the international community to prepare for a war that will almost certainly become the most costly and destructive in nearly a century—and one that will have profound long-term consequences for geopolitics, the world economy and, above all, for tens of millions of Ukrainians.

Now that it’s clear Putin won’t accept just a few pieces of Ukraine as his war spoils, and he won’t be seizing Kyiv without imposing a horrific, drawn-out siege of the capital, and we’re awake to the fact that he’s not a rational actor but a deranged nuclear-armed sociopath—we need to adjust our lens to correctly observe the facts on the ground.

*snip*

[SoonerPride]

1. How many years were we in Iraq? and then Afghantistan?

I think something on those time scales seems probable.

[Arazi]

2. Disagree. Russia will run out of money and willing soldiers within the year

If we’re lucky Putin dies even sooner

[secondwind]

3. I love how you think!!!!

[roamer65]

5. Unless China sticks its snout in the trough.

[Irish_Dem]

6. Interesting idea.

What kind of help do you think China would give Russia?

Financial help or actual military assistance?

Do you think China could sustain the financial sanctions? Maybe it can.

[roamer65]

8. If they do, at first...yuan.

I think Chinese yuan is about to become the preferred currency in Russia.

[Irish_Dem]

9. Also an interesting idea.

China owes a lot to Putin for taking down western democracies. Thereby making it much easier for China to become a 21st century global power. Together China and Russia hope to change the world order to an autocratic one. The US GOP is doing its part towards this goal.

I think you could be right, temporarily China may be a bit nervous about Russia and do some fake distancing. It is jittery about financial sanctions.

But in the end China and Russia must work together to achieve its goal of world dominance.

[roamer65]

10. Bingo.

Yuan financing will test the reactions of the west.

Yuan will become predominant in Siberia and spread westward from there.

[Irish_Dem]

11. This will be very interesting.

[regnaD kciN]

15. Perhaps, but yoking itself exclusively to China might be unappealing to Russia...

...if it means that Xi becomes the world leader, and Putin merely his client.

[Irish_Dem]

17. I assume they made a deal. Putin controls the West, China the East.

China also has dibs on Latin America and Africa.

But I cannot guess the exact deal they made.

But neither one is to be trusted. But they need each other for their mutual goal of changing the world power structure.

[Elessar Zappa]

18. Putin will never control the West.

[Irish_Dem]

19. He already does to a large extent.

He owns half the US Congress and US media, and owned a sitting POTUS.

Putin has divided and weakened the US substantially. We look foolish and weak. The US cannot even agree on wearing masks and getting a vaccine during a global pandemic. This is the PutinGOP at work. Decades of PutinGOP propaganda has been very successful.

The GOP agrees with Putin. They are working on taking control of the voting apparatus to give themselves permanent control of the US and its financial assets. And set up white christian minority rule.

Right now when there is a GOP POTUS he can go on a crime spree and get away with it. A Dem president is hamstrung most of time by the GOP.

The UK is a money laundering haven for Russian oligarchs, Putin has bought off the UK politicians and orchestrated BREXIT, which hurt UK greatly. France and Germany are tied up financially with Putin and depend upon his oil and gas.

Right now Putin has the West over a barrel as we watch Ukraine being destroyed.

The Ukraine invasion was meant to be another big nail in the democracy coffin. And a warning to the West that there is a new superpower in town and there is nothing we can do about it.

Putin hit a bump in the road here, but I think he will triple down to stay on his plan of shifting world power in his favor.

[uponit7771]

4. Unnnn, that's if Putrid is willing to throw double the amount of crap into it. He's only got small

... majority of Russians supporting it now

[Irish_Dem]

7. I think Putin could double or triple down now.

He is hell bent on becoming a dominant world leader. And he has to succeed in obtaining regional control.

He must destroy democratic countries or have them under his control.

[regnaD kciN]

14. People really need to read Alexander Dugin...

...an openly-fascist political philosopher who is very influential in the Kremlin.

Dugin holds that it's Russia's destiny and duty to create a traditional, authoritarian "Eurasian" empire, including all of continental Europe and Asia, with Moscow (the "Third Rome&quot as the seat of empire, to counter the "absolute evil" liberal democracy led by the U.S. and their client state the U.K. (I should note that Dugin, while nominally embracing Russian Orthodoxy, holds to a lot of crackpot occult theories similar to some by the weirder leaders of the Third Reich, and believes that the likely conclusion of this will be the end of the world, after which adherents of the Eurasian empire will enter into eternal bliss.) Incidentally, Dugin's writings are apparently required reading in Russian Army officer training.

I think it is short-sighted to believe that Putin's goals are merely a realpolitik effort to reconstitute a capitalist version of the former U.S.S.R. -- the Kremlin's aims are likely a lot more far-reaching than that.

[Irish_Dem]

16. I agree totally with your points.

I have been trying to tell people the same thing. Restoration of the Russian Empire is just a stepping stone to Putin's life long goal.
Destruction of all world democracies and installation of a new world order. Along with China, Putin hopes to have autocratic control of the globe.

Putin already greatly weakened the western democracies. He owns half the US congress and US media, and owned a sitting POTUS.
The GOP agrees with Putin's goals of destroying democracy. The GOP also wants permanent control of the US and its financial assets.

Yes I have read Dugin's works and we are naive not to understand that Putin believes much of this too, democracies are an absolute evil to be eradicated. Putin is obsessed with control, power, great wealth. He is a ruthless sociopath who will use any means possible to achieve his goals.

[Javaman]

12. the occupied's job is not to win but not to lose. nt

[regnaD kciN]

13. I agree -- the big question here...

...is "are western entities willing to keep this up for the long haul?"

Say we're two months in, and the situation is pretty much the status quo, with maybe some small Russian advances. Or that Russia has taken the eastern half of the country, and Zelenskyy and the government have relocated to Lviv. Or Russia has taken over all of the country, Zelenskyy leads a government-in-exile based in Warsaw and there's an ongoing insurgency?

At what point do our fellow western governments, or, more likely, western corporations declare "Face it, it's over. It's a shame what happened in Ukraine, but what are you going to do. Meanwhile, we're sustaining real economic damage here. It's time to face reality and lift the sanctions."

And I wish I knew the answer to that -- but I think it will take a lot of framing and persuasion to convince those entities that Putin is such an existential threat to them that they need to keep up the pressure at their own costs for years to come.