Dear @apshamilton
I agree to quite a lot of your points.
Here are some points where I disagree or want to add nuance:
The Russian Empire is expanding from its smallest size (in 1995) in 500 years.
It is not over-stretched, it is fighting close to home and bouncing back.
Yes, Russia is bouncing back since 1995. The question is if that is a longer-term bounce or a dead-cat bounce. I'd argue it's a dead-cat bounce. Russia is still far from its expansion of 1991. Is it fighting close to home? They will be as soon as ethnic unrest will evolve in its own borders between its many minorities.
It is The West that is terribly over-stretched, fighting far from home and being massively out-produced.
What is even worse is that NATO has lost technological superiority in many key areas of military tech.
The West "only" needs to produce weapons and deliver them. Ukraine bears the brunt of the war and the casualties. The West has a multiple of the industrial production and the financial and economic power compared to Russia (+China). It is a question of societal and political will how to allocate a country's resources. I don't know too much about military tech, but concerning general technology "the West" is way superior to Russia.
The West, especially Europe has been in decline for about 30 years, and when taking a look at the "leading" political figures here, I expect that development to continue for some years. Masculinity is largely absent in Europe, Europeans have lost the willingness or ability to take responsibility for themselves, for their family, for their community, but they want to save the climate. It is an absurd theatre, and I expect it to end badly.
Nonetheless there are many things in Europe that are less bad than in Russia.
It appears to me that the Ukrainian Army is close to breaking point and Western support is both massively insufficient and declining.
At some point, maybe this year, Russia will make big breakouts through exhausted and undermanned positions and Ukraine will have nothing left in reserves.
I would be surprised if that happens, but let's see.
Concerning demographics, I think that TFR as a measure of demographic health is not sufficient. It's just one discrete datapoint. Population pyramids are more useful. Germany and many other western countries had a big Babyboomer generation, then a short sharp decline of births and afterwards further slow decline. Russia's demography is way more distorted (pop_pyramid_Russia), due to WW2, Stalinist purges/hunger, the Soviet collapse (+alcoholism, drugs, epidemics like tuberculosis). And, the numbers for Russia are subject to false estimations or manipulation.
The current war reduces Russia's young (potentially creative) male population which will have impacts on its economy. The central rerouting/redistribution of resources from productive sectors to the military sector will increase prices of everyday goods and will impair the wellbeing of Russians and probably further decrease TFR.
And, what would be really interesting would be TFR datapoints separately per ethnicity. As far as I have read some years ago, certain minorities (but perhaps majorities in their community/oblast) "outbreed" Russians.
And, contrary to Russia, western European countries are able to attract immigrants to counter certain demographic problems, though they may bring other new problems.
Germany is massively de-industrialising because of high energy prices and shortages of skilled labor (see demographics).
Oh yes, 100% correct. I would add overregulation as a reason, potentially strategic mistakes regarding the collaboration with China, and a young population unwilling to work.
Putin is far more popular in Russia than any NATO politician is in their own country.
Yes, no surprise here.
It's a dictatorship. Opposition has either been killed, or has switched to cooperation or left the country or lost faith in elections and stays quiet until Putin is gone.
And, yes, there is much political infighting in NATO countries and politicians are unpopular (by now even evil clowns like Trudeau). I would say that people in western countries have very good alternatives to going into politics. So the capable people rather don't choose politics.
You see that (politics) as an advantage. I'd say for the government it is a short-term advantage. Over the longer term a system like Russia's has concrete bases. It seems very stable, until it doesn't, and then it is swept away in a matter of weeks.
The NATO countries have still not been able to address these very dangerous deficiencies despite almost two years of trying and there is no evidence that they will succeed in time to save themselves.
Some countries have tried, others have not. In my opinion it's a question of time. Perhaps some further negative development in Ukraine is necessary, so that western countries get their shit together, increase military production and supply Ukraine. This will come at costs for effete western societies, but I am sure this will come, and over time this will finish Russia as we know it. Europe had decades of low expenses for military (profiting from the US), and it is capable of increasing them. How much is Russia able to increase its military expenses? A war against Japan in 1904/05 weakened Russia massively, WW1 finally broke it. How much can Russia take?
He is a genuine patriot.
Is he? He is pillaging his country and redistributing huge amounts of money to his buddies.
But even more importantly, Putin is very moral by the traditional moral standards of Russia.
That may be right, and when we compare these standards to British or French standards? (~~~ embed:1771613542531117113?s=52&t=owstdfaoJSRdoZwd2-4Dhw) twitter metadata:cnNoZXJlbWV8fGh0dHBzOi8vdHdpdHRlci5jb20vcnNoZXJlbWUvc3RhdHVzLzE3NzE2MTM1NDI1MzExMTcxMTN8 ~~~
If NATO does not massively and quickly re-arm, prioritise weapons and ammunition production and obtaining war-winning weapons systems (esp. from Israel) and change its culture so that military service is valued, Russia will not be deterred from continuing the war into NATO territory.
Yes, I agree.
But what we have been seeing for 2 years is that Russia (on paper the second strongest military in the world) is utterly incapable of even occupying half of Ukraine. I am sure it won't invade a NATO country and it will even be driven out of Ukraine.
When or after shit has hit the fan in western countries, new (potentially conservative, anti-woke or anti-socialist) leaders will emerge and a new equilibrium will settle. Due to their more decentral, federal or flexible structure (compared to Russia), they are more resilient. Monolith countries like China or Russia will collapse.
Concerning your assessment of Israel's treatment by some western countries I agree.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day, best wishes from Germany (visiting family...)
zuerich
Nice concept but that convenient (for The West) phase of the war is ending.
The thing about wars is that they have a mind of their own and are rarely as confined as originally intended.
The thing about Western European powers attacking Russia, as NATO is doing more and more overtly every day, is that historically it invariably ends with Russian troops in Western European capitals. The Swedes, Fredrick II, Napoleon, Hitler.
Yes, and there were exceptions such as the Polish occupation of Moscow.
A big difference between your 4 examples and the current war is that these 4 examples were single empires that attacked not only Russia, but simultaneously other European countries (so from the European empire's view it was a 1:n fight). Today most of Europe is in unity with its opposition to Russia (which is a n:1 fight).