It doesn't matter what Russia is fighting with. The war is not about winning, it is about war profiteering. Both for Putin and the West. While the West gives out fat new contracts to build new weapons, Putin has stolen much of the grain produced in Ukraine and launders it through ship to ship transfers then sells to Egypt and other countries. This has made billions for Putin in the last year alone.
Putin wins if the war ends and he wins if it continues. The only way he doesn't win if he no longer gets to play the game.
On the highest level it is the war for the world order between democracies and autocracies.
On the level below it is a war for the spheres of influence between China and US.
Next, it is Russian war for the control of the Europe and middle east.
Below it is the wars by Iranian/Russian/Chinese proxies to help with the goals mentioned above.
In all ongoing conflicts the parties are aligned with the China on top of the chain in one side of the conflict and the US on the other.
Profits from stealing goods, people, or territories are just a means to ease the path to the goal or to improve the strategic position, but not the source of the conflict itself.
that all sounds like a nice theory but i feel like it absolves the actors of their actions and doesn’t actually add any details to what i was saying like i asked. it offers very little explanatory or predictive power so im not really sure what the point of the theory is except to assume a structure that could also be more simply explained by gordon gekko, “greed is good.”
I don't know why you say that it doesn't have predictive power, as it absolutely does.
For example, I predict that as long as western democracies will continue to depend on autocracies (there is no sign for that to stop), the existing wars will continue to expand and conflicts multiply.
I don't disagree with most of this. My point is only that if the West is not sending Ukraine SOTA across the board, it's not a serious handicap AFAICT.
if the PATRIOT missile systems that were promised were actually delivered ukraine would already be in a better position to defend against the countrywide missile attacks that have been going on. the problem i have with this is that the goal is not to end the conflict as much as it is to maintain the status quo.
Patriots are ridiculously expensive (a cool billion per battery), and best kept for certain missile threats. There are other cheaper weapons for other missile threats.
But yeah, Western assistance is more of a slow drip than a proper flow.
maybe that was a bad example, sorry. but i feel like we are on the same page so no hard feelings. actually i was thinking about patriots because of this bellingcat investigation where they were able to identify them from their interference with sentinel-1 satellites:
Short term, this war is costing Putin dearly - both inflation and rates in Russia are very high, there's a state of technological collapse (trains derailing etc.) due to sanctions and lack of access to advanced Western technology. Ultimately, he may only benefit if he's allowed to keep the territory he conquered and gets to absorb it into Russia. It may (or may not) be worth the cost he's paying for it right now.
Putin wins if the war ends and he wins if it continues. The only way he doesn't win if he no longer gets to play the game.