[ProjectArcturis]

I'm reminded of the classic Onion headline: "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point"

The deal he proposes is that Russia returns to the pre-2022 borders, and Ukraine joins NATO. That second point is critical, because without that protection by Western powers, Russia would surely rearm and reinvade Ukraine in a few years.

The alternative is that the war continues for several years, until Putin finally loses the will to fight, or is overthrown. That latter prospect, while initially appealing, would almost certainly result in a new leader who is just as aggressive, but more effective and less isolated.

Or, potentially, Russia itself might break up under the strain of prolonged war. We've never had a civil war in a nuclear power, but if you think that has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention so far.

[trasz3]

We had USSR split up 30 years ago, and it turned out quite well. Why assume making it happen again would result in something terrible?

[ProjectArcturis]

That was (mostly) a peaceful split, with countries that had been dominated by the Soviets for 50 years gaining independence. The rest of the Russian empire has been under Moscow/St Petersburg for 500 years. The ethnic Russian elites will not give up their Asian territories without a fight.

And, after what's happened to Ukraine, none of the new states will give up their nukes. We'll have a nuclear armed Dagestan, run by whoever was aggressive enough to seize power.

[hackinthebochs]

This is what is called over-updating on a single event. Probably the key difference is that each soviet republic was already a discrete identity based on ethnic, cultural, and historic ties, and so the default was simply to revert to that identity. For a state with no clear discrete sub-identities, nor with enough economic or military autonomy to survive as an independent state, civil war becomes much more likely as these lines are forcibly drawn.

[trasz3]

Current Russia has plenty of sub-identities though. It’s the worlds last colonial empire, and the division lines are obvious to everyone there. The only thing keeping it all together is the army and police.

(Cf https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1600551806429544452.html)

[hackinthebochs]

Informative thread, so thanks for that. This seems to be the key issue:

>Ethnicity, race and culture is not enough for the new states to work out. For them to succeed they must be able to pay their bills. Ergo, the principle of economic clusters will be at least as important for defining their borders as the ethnic or cultural one

Which one wins out? The fact that there is a conflict between economic cluster and ethnic cluster seems to strongly raise the likelihood of a civil war.

[yywwbbn]

Yes, but those parts that’s potentially might want to leave Russia are not geographically and economically significant compared to the rest of Russia.

[trasz3]

Siberia is way more significant than western Russia. That’s one of the pieces we’re commonly missing: Moscow is a hollow parasite.

[sasattack]

"Last colonial empire " Have you heard of the United States of America? Standing rock was like only a few years ago my guy