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Published | 2023/11/25 |
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Status | article incomplete |
Beau says:
Russia's losses in Ukraine have left them unable to achieve military superiority in the Baltic theater, changing the landscape of international foreign policy.
Foreign policy analysts
Analysis on the potential repercussions of Russia relying more on nuclear saber rattling and strategic deterrents.
#Russia #Ukraine #ForeignPolicy #Geopolitics #NATO
Well, howdy there, internet people, it's Beau again.
So today, we are going to talk about Russia
and balance and the Baltics.
And a new study that has come out
that is measuring something that we've talked about
on the channel for quite some time.
In fact, it's a position that I've taken
a little bit of heat for, for about a year.
And that's the idea that Russia already lost the war in Ukraine.
Not the fighting, but the geopolitical considerations that go along with it.
That there was no way Russia could emerge from this stronger than when they started.
This is a position that not a whole lot of people were comfortable with.
So before we get to the new study, I have to tell you about some old ones.
From 2015 to 2020, RAND Corp and a whole bunch of other think tanks, they ran these scenarios,
war games about the Baltics. Basically, Russia invades for whatever reason.
Russia always won. To save going through all of the details, Russia always won. There was
nothing that NATO could do to stop it. And in some of them, I can't remember who did
it, but one of them actually tried to like stack the deck in favor of NATO and they generated a
scenario in which there were a bunch of US Marines that were there and Russia didn't know they were
there, but they were ready to fight and we're talking about thousands of them. Russia still
one and the Baltics for those who don't know we're talking about Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia. It was just it was a part of NATO that they just weren't up to so
much so that they started putting energy into upping their their posture there. So
it's important to understand that in every scenario Russia would win here.
Here's a little bit of a new study that came out from the French Institute of
International Relations. Whatever the scope of the outcome of the war, Russia
will not be able to rebuild a position of military superiority in the Baltic
theater or even to set an approximate balance of forces with NATO.
Short version, the losses in Ukraine have been so significant that in a theater that
Russia had an assumed win, like to the point where NATO is like, we don't know what we
would do, we would do.
We have no idea how to deal with this.
They now cannot even achieve parity.
That's huge.
And it's even more pronounced because there are now other countries in the region that
have either joined or are in the process of joining NATO.
Russia's move into Ukraine was a geopolitical blunder that will be talked about for a very
very long time.
They were perceived as a near peer.
Now they can't achieve parity where they were assumed to have been able to win.
They don't have the forces.
It's not World War II anymore.
You can't build a military in a year, in two years.
It takes a lot of time.
The forces that they've had, the losses of those forces have put them in a position where
they're not perceived as a near peer anymore.
We're not at that big, the big high stakes poker table.
You have had foreign policy people come out and say stuff like this before, but you haven't
had something like this.
The lack of being able to have that kind of superiority right there on your border.
It kind of undermines the idea that it's going to be a multipolar fight.
Russia's kind of out of the game when it comes to the high-stakes stuff.
the U.S. and China, we'll start seeing Russia take a junior role, a more junior
role, to China in their endeavors. And we're already starting to see this, but
it's going to become more pronounced. This was a bad move. So again, we're
talking foreign policy right now, so take all the moral and ethical stuff out of
Geopolitically this was a bad move for Russia. The losses that they have
sustained, even if they were to win in Ukraine now, they still lost. And that is
that's going to become even more pronounced. Now this is all for those
people who are, you know, very much about American dominance and all of that. That
That sounds like good news and on some level it is if that is your position.
It's worth remembering though that if Russia lacks parity when it comes to conventional
forces, they may start to rely more heavily on nuclear saber rattling and strategic deterrents.
The stuff that they might be able to build quickly would be missiles, stuff like that.
Stuff you don't really have to train.
So once Russia decides on its course of action in Ukraine, you'll probably start to see them
develop on that front and try to really up their game there because it can be done a
lot faster than developing a modern military with, you know, an NCO Corps and
all of the stuff that's going to go along with it. Now, whether or not this has any
impact on thoughts within Russia, that's still yet to be seen. But something like
this and exposing publicly that Russia can't maintain parity there anymore, that
may be one of those things that has them reevaluating because at this point
they've already made these mistakes. They might be concerned about making it even
worse, and it may start to influence decision-making, but that's a maybe.
We'll have to wait and see what they do, but the overall tone now is a region
that Russia was supposed to be able to take and hold without any real issues.
it is now one where they can't even set an equal number of forces. It is changing
the big game, the landscape of foreign policy internationally. Anyway, it's just
Just a thought.
Y'all have a good day.
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