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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yanqui gil
