Also, is America benefiting from the war?
Worst Case: Pretty simply, one side or the other starts a nuclear war. Which would be the end of most life as we know it. “Tactical” nukes are not nearly as small scale as they might lead you to believe.
Best Case: There’s really not a great outcome of war. That bloodshed stops immediately and people can start to rebuild.
Practically speaking: At some point in time Ukraine will have to come to the negotiating table. They could have done it a long time ago, but they didn’t. The biggest question mark is what kind of terms Russia would accept at this point. Would they even believe any concessions from Ukraine after Minsk was found to be a sham? I can’t speak to that, I have no idea what Russian officials are thinking, but I would be surprised if they would accept anything short of unconditional surrender. There was a time where I think they would have accepted indepencent for Donetsk and Luhansk, along with a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality. I am not sure that is enough now.
EDIT:
Your additional question. US arms manufacturers benefit from every war, more customers. The average USian is not going to see a shred of those benefits unless you are a lockheed executive.
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In a full scale nuclear exchange between two countries that have enough firepower to glass the planet several times over, yes life as know it currently would be ended. No, 100% of all life would probably not be destroyed, but irrevocable damage would be done. Being concerned about climate change and not nuclear war is bizarre, do you think nuclear war wouldn’t damage the climate? For those who didn’t die in the initial blasts or the resulting nuclear fallout, the lasting effects of nuclear war on the climate would be staggering. I do not understand how somebody who claims to be worried about the environment can literally be advocating nuclear war.
Downplaying tactical nukes as “merely big bombs” is the most assinine take for justifying nuclear war I have ever heard. A tactical nuclear weapon is still a nuclear weapon. You are still talking massive shockwaves and radiation that will poison the surrounding environment and will absolutely have devastating effects wherever they are used. They are not conventional bombs and should not be thought of as such.
That isn’t even factoring in how likely it is that one side will escalate to strategic nuclear weapons should any nuclear firepower be used. There are strategic nuclear weapons that exceed the bomb of Hiroshima by 100x in some cases. Some of which the US has stationed in NATO bases.
I’m not justifying a nuclear war. And no one would blow the whole planet, because that makes no sense.
In a full scale nuclear war, the south hemisphere would be largely untouched for example.
Then it would be the large cities and the military places that would be nuked, which would leave large places of low population area untouched.
Then you should see what Hiroshima and nagasaki are today. They’re more living than many places on earth.
You have no idea what a nuclear bomb does, you have no idea how radiations work, and you have no idea how war works. You’re just scared.
Again, climate change is a far bigger threat to mankind than any nuclear war can be. That’s hard fact.
Japan had the infrastructure left to rebuild those cities. If a full nuclear exchange occurs, there will be no infrastructure, no healthy land for agriculture, no population to rebuild anything, there is just no possibility of recovery. I’m sorry but your take is unhinged.
No land for agriculture would be destroyed because it wouldn’t be bombed in the first place.
Regular bombardments in Ukraine are more pouting than a nuclear bomb would be because heavy metals don’t decay as fast as radioelements in the soils.
You are ignorant. You should read more.
True, I do enjoy reading more. Any literature you can recommend on the topic? I’m mostly relying on my understanding of nuclear famine, and the logical consequences of destroying vast amounts of infrastructure and population.
Well, I understand now why the kremlin propaganda wave the nuclear threat like that. It does work.
In the meantime it didn’t take any nuke to shake the food and energy markets. A blocus in the black sea and an embargo on Russian gas was all it took. So yes, a nuclear warhead would definitely destabilise world economy. But that’s more because it’d be a war in the western world.
The problem is that you’re missing the specifics. A nuclear war wouldn’t be the destruction of the whole world. It’d be a few countries. It wouldn’t be more destabilising than covid for example. It wouldn’t be more destabilising than a war in Europe or on America’s soil. Would some government shatter? Yes. Would it be the end of world? No.
No country is planning on painting the world in nukes for the sake of maximum radiation and destruction coverage.
Global warming though is already starting to alter agriculture productivity and conditions of life. It m’s already causing problems for food, water, disasters and rising ocean levels. If you want to be scared for an actual threat, you should look this way.
Then you should see what Hiroshima and nagasaki are today. They’re more living than many places on earth.
I live in Japan asshole, I have been to both. The amount of people who died in the aftermath of the bombing more than double those killed in the initial explosions. Leukemia was one of the biggest lasting effects, which predominantly affected children. Cancer rates went up. There are still people alive (albeit very few anymore) suffering aftereffects of the bombing; including people who lived far from the blast at the time of the bombing.
Those were 15-20kt blasts and only two. There are strategic weapons in both US and Russian reserves hundreds of times more powerful than that.
I wasn’t saying a bomb does’t kill people. I’m saying nukes can’t end humanity. That’s a hard fact. Unlike global warming.
Nuclear bombs are as damaging as war can be. That’s all. You’re from Japan? Then how many japanese died from the war before the bombs were launched? How many people the Japanese killed before these bombs? Compare the numbers.
Statistics are cold and heartless. Radiations don’t kill more than napalm, shrapnel or lead.
Best case scenario: Russia wins decisively, West witnesses a humiliating Saigon-like defeat of their fascist proxy regime in Ukraine, NATO loses all credibility and disintegrates. Western imperialism and US hegemony go into fatal death spiral. Global south goes on to liberate itself from neo-colonialism with the help of Russia and China.
Worst case scenario: Russia stumbles at the finish line, is unwilling to see this through to the end and pulls out even though they are winning. US capitalizes on this, using color revolution style means and separatist terrorists destroys and colonizes Russia. Western imperialism is strengthened and emboldened to try and do the same to China, US hegemony is reimposed on the parts of the global south that have resisted it so far. Fascism is victorious in Ukraine and gains so much prestige from its victory that we witness a global resurgence of fascist regimes and fascist movements which become increasingly normalized.
Is America benefiting from this? Yes and no, America is benefiting in the short term by making money selling more weapons and fossil fuels, by neutering Europe as a competitor through breaking it’s relationship with Russia and binding them closer into vassalge to the US. In the long term this war has accelerated the demise of US global hegemony, it has depleted Western arsenals, triggered an economic crisis in Europe which will overall weaken Western imperialism, and shown the global south that it is possible to defy and resist the US and the collective West, that they are paper tigers.
The US has massively miscalculated on this one and things will only get worse for it from here on out. Ukraine stands no chance of winning on the battlefield, and at this point even direct Western intervention would not change that. Nuclear war not really a realistic possibility anymore, Russia has no need to use nuclear means and in fact doing so would be a massive boon to the US since it would galvanize the West to commit even more to the war, and the US probably wouldn’t use nukes first either, though desperate it knows it needs to conserve its strength for the war on China so they cannot afford to get into a mutual nuclear destruction escalation spiral with Russia leaving China intact.
maybe i’m high on hopium but the best case scenario looks increasingly likely imo. we’ll see how the 2024 offensive goes
Time will tell. I think a lot of the other responses here are being unrealistic or simply unaware of the current state of the conflict and of the current mood in Russia and the Russian leadership. A freeze of the conflict is very unlikely to occur any time soon, and the fantasizing about a Ukrainian battlefield victory or the envisioning of nuclear war scenarios due to Russia using nuclear weapons are both very far from reality. Though not as detached from reality as the lunatic commenter here who keeps insisting that nuclear war would be no big deal… Of course nuclear war is always a danger that we have to take seriously but it does not look anywhere near as possible anymore as it did in the beginning of the conflict when there was the danger of the West doing something incredibly stupid because they had deluded themselves into thinking Russia was weak. Now i think the failure of the counteroffensive has cooled their jets and they are more focused on just keeping the conflict going or achieving a freeze so that their election chances next year are not completely fucked. Other than that they desperately want to move on and focus on China which they see as by far the more important conflict.
Worst case: nukes fly, WW3 starts
Best case: there is no realistic best case possible and i don’t want to pointlessly speculate about it.
at this point worst case scenario is Russia launching nukes , best is Ukraine making a concession and gives the 4 annexed regions to Russia thus making a land corridor to Crimea and signing a treaty not to join NATO alliance , thus bringing the war to end permanently .
I welcome input on my comment from others who know more than me about internal workings of Ukraine and Russia. I might be a dumbass.
Best case: Ceasefire starting right now so people stop getting killed, everyone keeps basically where they currently are, Ukraine no NATO and Russia stops occupying and lets the LPR and DPR self-direct.
Worst Case: War drags on for a a while, either side fully captures all of Ukraine. If Ukraine somehow wins completely then we’re basically back to 2015 and nothing has been solved, counter-insurgency from the Pro-Russia people, and far right militias getting free reign to kidnap/torture anyone they deem ‘collaborators’. If Russia wins then there’s enough people in the Western Ukraine where there’s going to be counter-insurgency and terrorism funded by the US. If Stalin couldn’t denazify Ukraine, then I’m not sure what Putin would be able to do.
Also concerning: all the debt Ukraine has from buying weapons, and all the shit they had to privatize. If their government exists they’re going to be an IMF colony, but that was happening slowly anyways if Russia didn’t invade. US does benefit because they sell natural gas, that’s why there’s many signs pointing to them helping Ukrainian Nationalists sabotage Nordstream (If they didn’t just do it themselves since it required diving experience according to Seymour Hirsch).
I’m not sure what’s realistic since the day-to-day horse-race stuff seems to largely be bunk. Obviously Russia isn’t imminently collapsing, but it seems like their gains slowed down.
Not sure how much longer countries in Europe will be willing to fund/support Ukraine, especially since no one really wanted to let them into NATO to begin with (Since Article 5 has only been used on Afghanistan after 911, and it’s not a given all members would abide by it when it comes to a real war instead of picking on farmers without a real military or a trading bloc). Also Ukraine drafting older and older doesn’t seem to bode well.
Hopefully both sides run out of steam at similar rates and negotiate something.
Probably a fairly reasonable take. I don’t think Ukraine winning completely is a likelihood short of NATO bringing troops to bear. Even then, they have depleted so many of their own resources, I am not sure that would be enough. Despite all the equipment they are receiving, they don’t have the people to man them. A lot of that equipment requires significant amounts of training, and while Ukraine had a contingent of NATO-trained troops at the start of the conflict, they don’t anymore. It doesn’t matter how good a tank you have (and let’s be honest, an Abrams tank is not what Ukraine needs right now) if all you have to fill it are farmers who should never have been pressed into the position they are in.
Regarding the debt, I believe I have seen stories about how ukrainian workers are basically going to be indentured servants after the war. Western nations are probably salivating over the cheap labour they stand to gain in the aftermath, as depressing as that sounds.
The worst case scenario is indeed the escalation into a nuclear war. It’s unlikely it’d escalate into a full nuclear mutual destruction. In fact, Russia using a nuclear warhead would mean its swift death. West would not use nukes if Russia don’t nuke them specifically, but they would militarily invade Russia. China would even help for that.
USA benefit a lot from this war. First, they’re getting rid of a major opponent without fighting themselves. The number was 5% of US budget was used to destroy 50% of Russian army without a single us citizen dying. Make it 10 or 15% until the end of the war, but Russia is a third world country now. Iran is providing them weapons. USA will now be able to focus on China.
Secondly, US economy will benefit from rebuilding the military arsenals. And the destabilisation of Europe means US influence strengthen when it was weakening before.
There are 3 outcomes from the war: Ukraine victory, Russia victory, or frozen war.
If Russia wins, it’ll be bad. They will use the victory to fuel more imperialism and war could spread in Europe. It might be a blow for the US reputation too as a pacifier of the world.
If it’s a frozen war, it won’t be so good. US reputation would be blown the same and it’ll probably be back to war in a few years.
If it’s Ukraine victory, it’ll settle nato’s position. Ukraine will begin a process of joining EU, and maybe nato. Russia will be humiliated and it’ll take it decades to come back from the blow. China would lose an important ally with this. It could have consequences in the UN.
The way Russia recover from a defeat will matter a lot depending on whether it’ll explode or not. If it explodes into several countries, there’ll certainly be war in Asia for decades. With countries with nukes. If it stays Russia, it’ll grow anger and probably make trouble in Asia and Africa.
This leads to the different kinds of victory for Ukraine: victory with territorial losses, full victory, or full victory with humiliation of Russia.
If the war grow too hard for either side to go further, they could try a peace treaty. Then it would depend on if Russia would keep some territories, especially crimea and/or dombass. In some cases, Ukraine could take the loss and Russia would consider it a win. This would ensure Russia stays a country, and if it leaves enough territory to Ukraine, the west would also consider it a victory for them.
In case of a full victory from Ukraine, that is Ukraine recover all of its territories, Russia would be humiliated. If a peace treaty leads to this, it’d be the same. Here I consider that Russia would be fighting to the end.
The third one would be if the Russian army or government was to collapse. This would probably lead to the end of Russia. But it is quite unlikely.
Yanqui gil
