Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Econ Lessons" channel.

  1. Maybe, but its not a zero sum game for the West, which wants stability. Russia genuinely believes what it is doing in Ukraine is an existential necessity, and if they become a poor country then that will affect all kinds of consideration in regards to deterring China. The West has let the Russians get the impression that they have to do what they are doing, more or less irrespective of the consequences.
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  2. That Russia is not gaining from this war in absolute terms is true but that tells us nothing about who is winning you have to elate Russia's plight to Ukraine's. Back in the 1960s there was an Italian fish 'n chip shop worker in Scotland who got really obese and decided to go on a diet. You would think such a person would not have what it took to starve himself consistently enough to be able to stick with a diet and he didn't diet, he entirely stopped eating. He fasted for a YEAR. Something very far from pleasant is going to have already happened to the people of Ukraine by the time Russia collapses from starvation.
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  3. Everyone is ready to act in absolute accordance with morality when it is identical with what brings worldly success, but not many people act morally irrespective of the consequences. There is a thing discovered by dementia researchers called cognitive reserve whereby the more intelligent you are the less organic problems are reflected in behaviour.
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  4. The leadership of Russia is not on tenterhooks to see if Trump or anyone else is President. They see the war as necessary and its continuation not contingent on this or that personality as US Pres. Those who think Washington has decisive leverage with certain election results ought to remember that Putin invaded Georgia when Bush was Pres, annexed and undercover invaded large portions of Ukraine the first time when Obama was in the White House and the full on invasion of 2022 happened despite Biden (a Ukraine hawk as Obama's VP) being Pres.
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  5. All Ukraine must be free; or what?
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  6. The knowledge that Putin will go down to defeat and his country become Westernised is presumably going to be available to the man himself at a certain point well before it happens and while he still has his hands on the levers of power. It seems to me that this moment of truth for the Kremlin leadership is one we are getting closer to and will be terribly dangerous. Unless he has a nervous breakdown and become suddenly lacking in agency, Putin would have time to react to the impending loss of everything he holds dear, whether by trying to save himself and his system, or doing something that ensured it was a very pyrrhic and bitter outcome for his current state opponents.
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  7. In principle. Ukraine can win if Russia is willing to cut its losses and quit at the conventional level; but nobody knows if it will. They will always have an option to take it to the next level,
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  8.  @fredfred2363  I don't think the Russians will quit, at the current level of intensity the losses for Russians are at most barely more unsustainable that Ukraine's are. Were the Russian losses to be understood to be unsustainable, then there'd be the very best pf incentives for ascend to a plane of conflict where Ukraine cannot follow and the West dares not go. I speak of theatre thermonuclear weapons. We keep being told that Russians do not care about Crimea, or regard it their national territory worth defending as much as Moscow, but the evidence of the last few years is that they are set on retaining at whatever cost, not just Crimea but also the territory gained since 2022.
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