Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "Defense Politics Asia (DPA)" channel.

  1. I miss the bookmarks for the different segments of the video!
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  2. What happened? Did he displease our internet overlords?
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  3.  @terjeoseberg990  According to whom? Anybody whose opinion/judgment matters? If so, how is what particular person's/country's judgment going to matter?
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  4. And if five men, each bigger and stronger than your two sons, threaten your sons with swords if they don't give up their wallets, do you tell them (from a safe distance on your cell phone) to fight to the death with their pocket knives rather than surrender their wallets (because you are an American)?
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  5. I assume the bridges across the Dnieper mostly haven't been destroyed. Why doesn't Russia just destroy all those bridges? Wouldn't that make it extremely difficult for Ukraine to maintain any kind of position east of the Dnieper for long? What am I missing?
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  6. Thank you for doing this! I was hoping you would. I think it would be great if you did more of these over different time periods, both longer and shorter.
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  7. From a military point of view, maybe, but from a PR perspective it was a way to say Ukraine was winning somewhere in order to give poorly informed Americans and other Westerners a reason (even if a false reason) to believe there was still hope that the tides were shifting or at least could shift in Ukraine's favor again so that Americans could feel like there was a reason to keep sending weapons to Ukraine, even if those weapons result mainly in more Ukrainians dying, getting maimed, more of Ukraine getting destroyed, and more of Ukraine getting taken by Russia (besides a handful of corrupt Ukrainians getting rich or feeding their vainglory.)
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  8. The one thing I would add to your analysis is that the Ukrainian leadership's incentives aren't so much to win the war as to keep the money coming in from the West, so an offensive that generate useful PR material for Western media can be considered a success for Ukraine's leadership even if it's strategically a complete failure in the war and for the country of Ukraine.
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  9. Ukraine was bad enough off even before 2014 (let alone 2022) with a per capita GDP approximately a third of Russia's and approximately 10% of the EU, the lowest birth rate in all of Europe, and massive out-migration of working/childbearing age men and women.
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  10.  @terjeoseberg990  I didn't say anything about nucs (or even anything directly about Russia.) I asked according to whom has Lithuania done nothing illegal? Anybody whose opinion/judgment matters? If so, how is what particular person's/country's judgment going to matter?
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  11.  @Telechronic  OK, that's mighty brave of you to tell your sons to die for nothing. Another question: > If another nation invades your nation, you fight the invaders. You don't give up, you don't surrender, you don't negotiate - you fight to the end. Do you have the same feelings about the NATO invasion of Serbia?
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  12. I definitely prefer the 2D to the 3D map style. All the 3D seems to do is distort the map and make it harder to keep track of where you are on the map. It's not as if the height of buildings or mountains or anything else is actually getting displayed anyway.
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  13. What do the West's state leaders stand to lose? Nothing, really.
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  14. Why should Serbia accept Clinton killing over 1500 of its people and stealing 14% of its land?
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  15. @ Thank you!
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  16. The tide very much seems to be going the direction of Ukraine since Russia was forced to withdraw from most of Kharkiv Oblast, but like you say, how much the two sides are willing to escalate could make a big difference going forward. Russia is clearly beginning another level of escalation by calling up two or three hundred thousand reservists and could potentially escalate in other ways, e.g. it seems it could take greater risks with its air force to use it more aggressively. On the other side, it's hard to see how Ukraine can escalate further. The West could send more and newer weapons to Ukraine, but that would require a much bigger commitment than giving Ukraine older weapons that more or less needed to be replaced anyway plus some limited weapons that the West already had in relative abundance. It seems like giving Ukraine more weapons at this point is going to mean seriously depleting the West's own militaries. The West could commit to rapidly manufacturing replacements, but that would come at a much steeper cost than what the West has done so far, and meanwhile the West's attention span is short. And if we add to the fact that the West is already losing interest in the war (excluding, of course, the military-industrial complex), inflation, recession, and the costs and hardships the European West will face this winter without regular supplies of Russian natural gas, it seems very possible that Western leaders will be forced to take other priorities. So it seems Ukraine may be forced to de-escalate before long, all while Russia escalates, assuming the war doesn't come to an end first.
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  17. Unless you're bowing down before NATO, then being able to live on your knees is worth dying for.
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  18.  @Telechronic  You ever been pulled over for a traffic violation you disagreed with the cop about? I guess not, because you would have fought the cop to the death then and there and wouldn't be able to comment here any more, right?
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  19. That's like arguing that France could have defeated Germany in WWI if England and the US had merely contributed enough "resources" (but no men/armies) to the French war effort. That's not remotely what happened, and if it had been France would have been thoroughly defeated by Germany.
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  20. No more than Serbia was "defending its territory" in the Kosovo War.
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  21. I've definitely appreciated your longer reports, but sometimes these lazy sitreps are perfect. I hope you'll keep them up, even if just once a week.
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  22.  @CheemskoGiondau  Disastrous? What does Russia stand to lose even if Ukraine is wildly successful with this offensive on the ground? It doesn't seem like there's much potential advantage for Ukraine even in the best case scenario. Tell me what I'm missing.
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  23. Who says the Ukrainians aren't convinced or that it would matter if they were? They certainly can't vote on the question directly. The government isn't even allowing them to vote for representatives any more (which wouldn't represent them any more than the American deep state represents American voters even if they could vote for representatives), and their current ruler was elected on a platform of peace and compromise with Russia.
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  24. What would Ukraine have had to "trust Russia" on? You're attacking a straw man.
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  25.  @Nitroat-xo4tj  What deal would Russia have to honor? You're attacking a straw man.
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  26.  @Nitroat-xo4tj  The original deal was more or less that Russia would withdraw from all but Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts if Ukraine would agree not to join NATO and forfeit those oblasts (which it didn't control anyway.) That means Ukraine didn't really have to trust Russia at all, but Russia had to trust Ukraine not to just renege on its end of the deal as soon as Russia had withdrawn.
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  27.  @brandontaylor6326  The recent news certainly seems to suggest that Ukraine is superior, but that certainly didn't seem to be the case just a couple months ago when Russia took Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, for example. Arguing who's superior and who's inferior seems to miss the real question of what changed between two months ago and now. Either there were some major strategic blunders recently on the part of Russia or there was a correction of previous major strategic blunders on the part of Ukraine or Ukraine has gained some significant new military resources or Russia has depleted and been unable to replenish resources that were previously enabling Russia to maintain the offensive or some combination of those factors, right?
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  28.  @AbbeyRoadkill1  "...and they are fighting on their own soil, which means they have the support from the local population." That depends on what specific locations in Ukraine we're talking about. If it were true that Kiev had the support of Ukrainians all over the former boundaries of Ukraine then Kiev wouldn't be (and have consistently been) completely opposed to any sort of local referendums, including Elon Musk's recent UN-administered proposal.
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  29.  @AbbeyRoadkill1  But were Polish collaborators heavily concentrated in particular parts of Poland where they constituted majorities?
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  30. 100 days??? What's the significance of that number?
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  31. It's not the zone of "control," just the frontline areas of Ukrainian/Russian military presence (plus everything behind those lines.) There would be no practical way to determine "control," and presence is much more useful for determining day-to-day status.
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  32. @yzmey42113 I haven't heard of the Great Game, but I've heard of the Crimean War.
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  33. I guess you think the pope is a Russian shill, too?
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  34. I think you put all of that very well except for the stupidity part. I think what Zelensky is doing actually is in his narrow self interest. The fact that it's not in the country's interest only highlights the corruption part.
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  35.  @youareliedtobythemedia  You think Ukraine has a better economy than Russia?????
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  36.  @youareliedtobythemedia  So do you likewise think France could have defeated Germany and the Central Powers in WWI without any English or American forces but just with American "support" because America had a better economy than war-time Germany?
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  37.  @youareliedtobythemedia  If you think France could have defeated Germany in WWI without any British or American troops, you probably also think Kuwait could have won the Kuwait war without any American or other allied forces.
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  38.  @youareliedtobythemedia  Ukraine was headed into demographic collapse even before 2014. True, the war will end before Ukraine can literally fight to the last man, and that's in large part because Ukraine can't continue to meet the very most basic needs of its people if all the men are conscripted. And not only will Ukraine not be able to meet the basic needs of its people short-term, but what's the point of fighting if there aren't any young men left to raise another generation of Ukrainians after the war? Some kind of collapse will come long before NATO fights Russia to the last Ukrainian, no matter how much support NATO provides.
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  39.  @youareliedtobythemedia  Ukraine's pre-war birth rate was almost as low as Vatican City, the lowest of any country in the world. Russia's is very low, but still close to double Ukraine's. Likewise, the population of Russia and Ukraine both dropped between the break-up of the USSR and 2014, but in percentage terms Ukraine lost nearly twice as many people as Russia in that time. And then a significant percentage of the people that have fled Ukraine since 2022 are now living in Russia. Ukraine's dire population issues are the reason that Ukraine is conscripting men over 40 but not "normal" fighting age men of 18-27. Yes, the pre-Russian invasion population of Ukraine was greater than post-WWII, but with all of the young women and children that fled since 2022 Ukraine's population now (even if you're not just looking at the parts of pre-2014 Ukraine that are currently under Ukrainian control) might be about as low as 1945, but the big difference between 1945 and today is that the Ukrainian population in 2021 was extremely heavy on old people. In 2021, there were more than twice as many 60 year old Ukrainian women as 18 year old women (or men), and, of course, it's overwhelmingly younger women and children that have left since then, dramatically exacerbating that problem even further, and many of those young women and children are never going to return for the same reasons so many were leaving even before 2014, and there will be even more reasons not to return after the war is over. You're not going to rebuild a country with 60+ year old women and disabled veterans.
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  40. Someone explain to me what the Kursk offensive might achieve to whatever extent it's successful on the ground. I assume Ukraine isn't actually trying to permanently take territory from Russia, so what are the possible advantages of taking it temporarily. It seems to me that the more forces Ukraine devotes to taking land it's going to give back to Russia sooner or later, the fewer forces it's devoting to the fronts where if Ukraine loses ground there's a good possibility Ukraine will never get it back.
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  41. Yes, Germany is subservient, but Germans most certainly don't "look up to" Americans. Germans disdain America much the same way America's ruling class disdains the American people.
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  42.  @terjeoseberg990  International law according to whom? Anybody whose opinion/judgment matters? If so, how is that particular person's/country's judgment going to matter?
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  43.  @Potaters12  digimaks's opponent? I'm guessing he's not part of the fight.
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  44.  @targaryen208  The German military was already collapsing before D-Day. Germany had already lost territory about 3 times the size of all of Ukraine by the time the first Allied troops landed at Normandy.
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  45.  @Telechronic  No, it's your reasoning that's primitive. And as for which principles apply to the issue at hand, the best test of whether principles are true principles worthy of defending as such or just lame excuses is to examine whether they hold true with other issues or whether other issues expose the absurdity of a false claim (as is the case with your assertion that we should always fight to end rather than compromise, not matter what the realistic odds of success.)
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  46. ​ @Telechronic  > I never said such a thing by the way. What are you talking about? Such a thing as what?
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  47. ​ @Telechronic  If you're strategy now is to avoid saying anything intelligible or substantive? I'd hide from the arguments you were making earlier, too.
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  48. But Zelensky, Blackrock, Raytheon, Pfizer... are coming out ahead, so what does it matter how bad it all is for the people of Ukraine, the EU, the US, etc.?
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  49.  @seawolfinblue4389  Zelensky, Blackrock, Raytheon, etc. stand to come out ahead even if in the end there's nothing left of Ukraine at all.
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  50.  @santoriniblue8413  > if the momentum cannot be exploited to a breakthru Where could they even hope to break through to? It's not like they have any hope of taking Moscow, right? So what does it really matter if they do break through? Then what? What have they accomplished?
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