RadixJournal - September 14, 2022


Why Putin Will Escalate

Hosted by
Richard Spencer
Mentioned
Putin Donbass
Everything's A Remix The Case Against ＂Free Speech＂

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

134.3

Word count

1,305

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the latest in the Ukraine crisis, and why we should be worried about it. We also discuss the reasons why Putin should have been prepared to invade Ukraine and why he failed to do so, and what we can learn from it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 you cannot make the argument that Ukraine's a fake country and it's going to collapse like a 0.96
00:00:08.140 folding chair in a matter of weeks. So why are we wasting our time with this? Let's start dealing
00:00:14.620 with Russia. You know, Russia's the strong power. Ukraine's weak. We're just going to have to deal 0.96
00:00:21.240 with the strong power. Those arguments are fair, I guess, you know, like theoretically, but I think
00:00:31.460 at this point, I mean, all of these, you know, and I even see this in the United States with these
00:00:38.400 effectively pro-Russian bloggers who are like, just telling you, like, let me just tell you the
00:00:45.640 truth here. This war is going to last days. Even resisting in any way is just going to cause
00:00:52.700 bloodshed and pain and heartache. Don't do it. You know, Russia's bad, badass. It's the, maybe even 1.00
00:01:00.920 the best military, if not the second best. And, you know, all of this kind of bluster. And I feel
00:01:07.260 like all of that is, is just ridiculous at this point. You know, I mean, the, the Ukraine has 0.94
00:01:16.400 obviously been helped tremendously by NATO and the United States, but like, it's, it's also a fighting
00:01:24.200 force that has done the fighting and dying. And so you just can't make these arguments anymore. And
00:01:33.400 so I, yeah, I mean, particularly now when something like victory is in sight. Now, I ultimately don't
00:01:43.360 think that victory is in sight. I, I believe that, you know, first off, in terms of the South and
00:01:54.660 Crimea, those places, we haven't seen blitzkrieg victories there. How far there, you know, Ukraine's 0.86
00:02:03.320 going to push to the East is an interesting question. I mean, I definitely think, you know,
00:02:07.640 the, the, when, when, whether you're talking about like military endeavors or sports or whatever,
00:02:13.740 it's about piling on and, you know, the nothing succeeds like success. You just keep going. Like
00:02:20.480 once you have momentum, it's time to start press, pressing, pressing, pressing. So we'll see like
00:02:26.200 if they're going to actually go into the Donbass region. I mean, I think this is a huge issue,
00:02:30.940 but from the standpoint of Putin, you know, I, it's reasonable to suggest that at the very beginning,
00:02:43.440 he thought that he could just throw a knockout punch and, you know, go in, disrupt the government
00:02:52.920 and keep, um, put in his own guys, um, whether he wanted to just, you know, take over the whole
00:03:01.280 country. I'm not sure, but he certainly wanted to disrupt things tremendously in his favor and,
00:03:10.100 you know, basically turn Ukraine into Belarus. Um, you know, in Belarus and, and Russia are in 0.73
00:03:20.240 something approaching a union state, but he can't do that. But so that has failed, absolutely failed.
00:03:29.320 And it's been embarrassing, but you know, you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. I mean,
00:03:35.320 the notion that he'll now back down and negotiate, I think is just totally wrong. I mean, I think that
00:03:47.540 would just be impossible for him to do because he would be out of power immediately. I mean, there's
00:03:55.000 no way this would have been viewed as anything other than, and a humiliation. And so where we are now,
00:04:05.060 I mean, maybe smartly Putin did describe this as a special military operation and not a war.
00:04:13.400 And, um, you know, so he kind of kept his powder dry. Like he, he didn't totally mobilize the country.
00:04:24.320 Now, obviously Russia has suffered tremendous losses. And it's interesting when you look at like
00:04:30.560 the man to man ratio. So from what I understand, when you're invading a country, you need to have
00:04:39.940 three to one resource, um, advantage to successfully invade. This is a, just a rule of thumb and the
00:04:49.180 sense that you are, you're, you're, you have the initiative and that, and having the initiative
00:04:54.520 striking first is absolutely an advantage. Um, but of course the people you're invading can hunker
00:05:01.180 down. They have, um, they can maintain morale. You know, you're defending your own home. They know the
00:05:07.660 terrain better than you do, et cetera. So it's a kind of, you need to outnumber them three to one to
00:05:14.820 successfully invade a country more or less. And the, um, from what I understand, it was actually a
00:05:23.720 one-to-one ratio in terms of Russian soldiers to Ukrainians. And, you know, he's going to need
00:05:33.480 full mobilization of the country going forward. I mean, I, unless he's going to basically be humiliated
00:05:43.600 and watch NATO expand, he, I don't know, maybe negotiates an ability to hold on to the Donbass
00:05:53.340 region or something. Um, that just strikes me as humiliating and he would be out of power almost
00:06:02.320 immediately. Um, and the other thing about it is that kind of like when you're in for a penny,
00:06:08.560 you're in for a pound, I mean, even if he is kicked out or even executed or something, um,
00:06:18.660 the, the sanction regime isn't going away. And like the notion that Europe would just be like,
00:06:26.960 Oh, it's okay. We forgive everything. Let's just move on. And, you know, we're going to start buying
00:06:32.940 more and more gas from you that I don't think that is in the cards. I just, I don't see that as,
00:06:39.840 as plausible. Like this reaction has been so tremendous. You just, you cannot dial that back
00:06:47.160 within a decade or two decades. I mean, it is major. There's an interesting article I just read
00:06:54.660 this morning on kind of a neo cold war footing, including China, which is, um, this article in
00:07:00.780 foreign affairs and an article in the New York times on it, but, um, I, I feel like Putin is now
00:07:08.940 forced to engage in full mobilization. And so I think a lot of dangerous things are now very possible
00:07:17.600 when he does that. I, I just, it is, I mean, I can be proven wrong, but it is hard to imagine him
00:07:26.440 backing down and negotiating a settlement. I just, I cannot see that. Um, and if he did that,
00:07:36.460 he would be out of power immediately. So I, I think this is, it might take him a little bit of
00:07:43.080 time to kind of get the wheels rolling again, but I see full mobilization and a major counter-attack
00:07:52.640 and also like the possibility of tactical nuclear weapons is in the air because that would be an
00:08:05.520 absolute strategic advantage for him. First off, he has that in his arsenal. Secondly, Ukraine is not
00:08:14.560 a member of NATO there, you know, there, there has been a react, a pro NATO reaction in Western and
00:08:21.760 Central Europe and Northern Europe. Of course there has been, but there are like, there are voices
00:08:27.520 out there, um, that are basically like, let's fold. Why are we doing this? This is going to be a
00:08:34.700 quagmire. Um, we, you know, I'm cold and, you know, we're just giving money to Ukraine. You know,
00:08:41.120 you see those voices in the United States, you see those voices in Europe, they are minority voices and,
00:08:47.000 um, but they're there and they can become really intense. And, um, so I, I do think that like a
00:08:57.720 massive counter strike is in that, that is a strategic advantage that Putin has. So, um, anyway,
00:09:06.760 I mean, I think overall, I think that Ukraine has proven itself. It's had tremendous help of course,
00:09:14.460 but like, nevertheless, it's proven itself. And, um, but I, I think, yeah, I, I think we might have
00:09:24.760 a little bit of a lull here and a kind of, you know, victory celebration. And, um, once we get into
00:09:33.840 like the year anniversary, I, I think we might be in a situation where things are much more intense.
00:09:38.820 I, I just cannot see Putin backing down.