this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Ultimately, economics plays a significant role here. The US began winding down its involvement in Vietnam largely due to economic reasons. Incidentally, the war spending was a major factor that led to the country going off the gold standard. Today, the US is in a far worse financial situation than it was in the 1970s. Additionally, the dollar-based global economy is rapidly shrinking, which poses a huge problem for the US as its monetary policy relies on sustained demand for the currency. In particular, the petrodollar ensured that countries would need a constant supply of dollars to purchase oil; those days are over. The US is also ramping up tensions with China, which will have further significant negative impacts on the economy. China produces many essential goods and can easily put surgical tariffs on the United States that could cause massive damage.
All of this is leading to public unrest domestically as people begin to connect the cost of empire with their declining conditions at home, which parallels the end of the war in Vietnam where mass protests started across the country. Furthermore, the empire is starting to unravel with countries that used to be firmly under US control moving towards BRICS. This trend will continue accelerating, and this puts even more stress on the economy since it's cutting off access to cheap labor and resources that the US previously had. We are rapidly moving towards a G7 vs. the rest situation geopolitically, with the G7 already being smaller than BRICS economically.
Another huge factor is that the US has largely deindustrialized; Russia alone outproduces both the US and Europe in terms of military production combined. Meanwhile, the US is using up its existing stocks of weapons and ammunition. Once those are gone, there's no easy way to replace them. This will take many years because the US needs a trained workforce to build and operate factories that don't even exist yet.
Given all this, I really don't see how the United States can possibly drag this out for another two years let alone 7-10. When we look at historical context, it is essential to appreciate the differences from the current moment in history.
I definitely appreciate this response and these are very interesting thoughts though I think most of them are medium-term problems not necessarily near-term issues and that the US feels its back is against a wall, that it can avoid those issues, must avoid those issues through a decisive defeat of Russia and maybe this is a trap they can't get out of and I'd like that to be true but I'm skeptical. That is if this thing is still going in 8 years yes I think those pressures would definitely have come to bear as serious problems but I'm not sure how soon they'll come to bear.
I do agree we are in a new world, but I also think the west has the capacity to keep the Ukrainians in the game for another couple of years if they continue fighting a defensive war (with terror attacks and such) and just dumping bodies into the fray to absorb Russian missiles and bombs. I feel like there are plans within plans in play here, designs on Europe conditioned on not allowing Russia a victory but maybe it's just bullshit American politicking and Biden doesn't want an L before the election and after the election if he's re-elected the US will demand Zelensky wind things down. This is with the obvious caveat that Russia doesn't pull an offensive, if they do then Ukraine could straight up evaporate, but assuming they don't want to do that I think the US still has a little time though you're right likely not another full administration's length worth.
I actually think that it's highly likely we'll see a decisive victory by Russia this year. There are already signs that Ukrainian lines are in the process of collapse as we speak. Even western media is starting to report on this, here are a couple of examples
Ukraine doesn't have defensive lines comparable to what Russia used to stop Ukrainian offensive last summer, and now that Russia broke through Avidievka, there appears to be a general collapse unfolding. This might be impossible to arrest regardless of what the west does.
The big problem Ukraine has lies in lack of trained and experienced soldiers. A lot of the ideologically committed people are now dead, and they're being replaced with fresh conscripts who are not interested in fighting, and don't have any combat skills. As the ratio of conscripts keeps growing, there's going to be an inflection point when there just won't be enough professional soldiers to keep the army together.
Another problem for the west is that Russia is massively outproducing the west industrially https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery-shell-production-us-europe-ukraine/index.html
This is primarily an artillery war, and Russia enjoys something like 10x advantage in artillery fire. This translates into very lobsided ratio in terms of losses for Ukraine. Now, we're also seeing Russian aviation doing constant bombing which Ukraine has no defence against. This situation simply can't go on for years.
Finally, I highly recommend reading this analysis from RUSI which explains that the west simply isn't capable of fighting this sort of a war currently https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine