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by wartywhoa23 46 days ago
No, and we have wars no one in their sane mind would even imagine 20 years ago, like that of Russia vs Ukraine.

See, it's easy to speculate how there are less wars when you live in a place which haven't seen war for decades or cenuries, but it's a complete game changer when it's 150 km from where you live, and it's not just some regular war, but a long play intentional meatgrinding AI drone debugging polygon.
2 comments
handedness 46 days ago
> it's easy to speculate how there are less wars when you live in a place which haven't seen war for decades or cenuries, but it's a complete game changer when it's 150 km from where you live...

I can appreciate how having skin in the game makes it feel different, but that's like saying, "I know crime isn't down, because somebody broke into my car last week." That's faulty on several levels.

By many--most, even--measures, wars since WWII are massively down globally. I don't expect that to hold as the US strategically disentangles itself from the globe, though.

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handedness 46 days ago
Many analysts of very sane mind imagined exactly that war 20 years ago, or longer.

The geopolitical fact is that Russia lacks strategic depth, which has bitten it badly multiple times in the past. From their view, that's something to be remedied to prevent future occurrences.

For Russia to gain strategic depth, there are a few lines which it needs to control. There are ~6-10 gaps, depending on how you count them, and on what net importance/counter-productiveness you assign to some of the more marginal and fraught ones. Holding any is better than holding none.

The big surprise is that Putin left Ukraine so late, when many of his best-trained ex-Soviet personnel had already died. Had he done it even just a few years earlier, the outcome would have likely been very different. The only analysts who thought it wouldn't happen thought so precisely because he left it too late.

Regardless, the best time for Europe to get serious about this war was before it started, unfortunately, and there was ample warning.

I hope you can stay safe so near to it.

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