Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Russia

It will be interesting to see how far and how fast the new 'impetus' to resolve the Wests potential exposed supply chains to energy

Here is a report in a German online newspaper where the Ukrainian secret service claims that Putin is ill with cancer.
Unfortunately the link is only in German language

https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/video...toedliche-Krankheit-article23823903.html

one should be very careful with statements that are not confirmed

As you wrote some days before:




I believe that this war is also a war of the media and with a lot of psychological warfare!

My take on this is that the USA will happily donate all the weapons and materiel the Ukrainians need to kick the Russians out and re-establish Ukraine as a sovereign territory on the 1991 borders.

Why?

1. It's a perfect testing ground for their military equipment, allowing them to get rid of loads of old stock/2nd tier equipment. This enables the military industrial complex to continue to justify their trillions of dollars of government spending, creates a demand for new first-tier kit, and supports loads of domestic industries and jobs.

2. It's going to put Russia out of the threat league for decades. When Putin goes either through illness or defenestration, Russia will break up into loads of factions and internecine conflict and the US wants to ensure there's as little decent military equipment as possible available to them. As the economy further collapses and whatever money is left is stolen by the kleptocrats, there won't be anything left to maintain the nuclear weapons and they will quickly become unusable. That's a huge threat off the table.

3. At a time when China is eyeing up its chances over Taiwan, it's a perfect practical demonstration of what US military muscle can achieve even when using second-tier equipment and non-American armed forces. Taiwan is vastly more important to the US strategically than eastern Europe, so it's a very powerful message to China "If we're prepared to do this to protect Ukraine, just imagine what we'll do to protect Taiwan"

And all this at no cost to American lives and remarkably little in budgetary terms. They have sent the equivalent of about $50bn in aid in 2022, or 6% of their 2023 military budget of £782Bn. In terms of what they will gain from Russia's defeat, it's a complete bargain.

As for how long this will take? It might drag on for another year, but when the end comes it will come very quickly. It's in America's interest for this to end decisively and enable them to focus on the Chinese threat.

As I wrote earlier in the thread propaganda is a two way street and always part of war games historically.

Yes, especially as the swing to renewables will tend to improve all countries' energy security. Last year for example the UK got more than 50% of its energy needs from renewables.

Climate change will also play a big role - look for example at how the mild weather has completely torpedoed Russia's assumption that Europe would quickly acquiesce when faced with not getting Russian gas.

The big prize for China would be to gain control of Taiwan's semiconductor industry - TSMC supplies over half the world's computer chips. They would see that as going an awful long way to offsetting any economic downturns from Covid or wherever. A big threat to US hegemony.

This is basically what my mind has been thinking but trying to gauge China is risky.