(02-27-2022, 11:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If this is a 1T war it eill end most likely as status quo ante bellum for boundaries.As for Putin he might consider that bungled wars of a leader's choosing are not good for long-term survival in that role.
Not necessarily status quo ante bellum, just similar. The key elements of a 1T war are that there is not much change (though there is always some), all parties involved can plausibly claim victory or at least "lack of defeat" (and their populations are able to accept such a claim without doing too much mental gymnastics), and all parties involved are more 1T-ish after it than they were before it.
If I had to guess, a "Ukrainian victory" (as perceived by the West) would involve losing Donetsk and Luhansk (as well as Crimea, which was already lost), while remaining intact otherwise (and becoming much more closely connected to the West). Both sides will claim victory, with Ukraine probably declaring itself to be the victorious David to Russia's Goliath and probably dismissing the lost territory with a "whatever, they didn't even want to be here anyway," and Russia probably proclaiming the "liberation" of those regions while trying to sweep the incredibly incompetent invasion under the rug, probably with some kind of word salad like "we didn't actually want to invade all of Ukraine, we just wanted to look like we were going to, it was posturing that was necessary to liberate these regions" or something like that.
And Ukraine is already more 1T-ish now than it was a week ago, and was more 1T-ish then than it was a month before that. So that part is already done.
2001, a very artistic hero and/or a very heroic artist
