Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
Redbrickbear said:
FLBear5630 said:
Sam Lowry said:
Zelensky promising better results from the domestic defense industry and telling Ukrainians they need to "learn to live with" the war. Translation: we're out of troops and the Americans are out of ammo, but please don't run me out on a rail just yet.
I didn't realize we were out of ammo and the Ukrainians are being forced to surrender today.
Ukraine will never run out of ammo or equipment because the USA & EU ruling classes are determine to fund this war out into eternity….no matter if average American and European taxpayers and voters oppose it or not.
But what Ukraine is gonna run out of is young fighting age men at some point.
Ask the Southerners in 1865
Ask the French in 1917
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_French_Army_mutinies#:~:text=The%201917%20French%20Army%20mutinies,Nivelle%20Offensive%20in%20April%201917.
Ask the Germans in 1945
Ask the Iraqis in 1988
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
Eventually the smaller nation runs out of fighting men before the larger populated nation.
This war ends when the Nation being invaded decides to settle. It is their Nation at stake. You keep interjecting your political believes into this situation. Ukraine is asking for support to survive, NATO is providing tools.
It ends 1 of 2 ways, Ukraine says "No Mas" or Putin pulls his troops out. That is it. You may want to ask the average Ukrainian if they want to capitulate to Putin.
Red's keen interest on demographics has negatively affected his perception of dynamics in Ukraine. None of the situations listed above ended because the parties involved ran out of men to put in uniform. Iran/Iraq in particular does not fit. The smaller nation finished the war stronger, thanks in no small part to massive international assistance.
"Saddam invaded Kuwait to annul his debts accrued from the Iran-Iraq war"
Iraq ended that war with lots of weapons and a seasoned army officer corp because of Western support...but they were fought to a stand still by Iran using their superior numbers of men and human wave tactics.
Iraq failed in that war precisely because of the superior numbers of Iranians. Iraq pop. of 16.9 million in 1988 vs Iran's 53 million people.
And Iraq was so broke from the fighting that Saddam made a foolish gamble to invade Kuwait to try and stop the bleeding of cash out of the country and annul the Iraqi debt. Leading to an Iraqi disasterous war with the USA.
[The war cost both sides in lives and economic damage: about half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers and an equivalent number of civilians died, with many more injured; however, the war brought neither reparations nor changes in borders. The conflict has been compared to World War I in terms of the tactics used, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across trenches, manned machine gun posts, bayonet charges, human wave attacks across a no man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as sulfur mustard by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops, civilians, and Kurds. The world powers United States and the Soviet Union, together with many Western and Arab countries, provided military, intelligence, economic, and political support for Iraq.]
Had Iraq had the 53 million population...and Iran had the 16 million pop....Iraq would have won easily
Demographics matters.
p.s.
The more you think about it the more there are serious comparison points to be made between the Iran-Iraq war and the Russo-Ukrainian war
of course demographics matters, but the premise of your argument is that demographics are determinative. they are not. Good strategy and execution can offset. Foreign assistance can offset, and did specifically in the case of the I/I War. It went on for
8 YEARS and ended in a draw, despite Iraq having approx 20% of the population Iran did.
Ukraine has a third of the population of Russia, and has the following advantages over Iraq:
-1) 3x more people than Iraq (more raw numbers = easier to keep multiple domestic industries going) for conflict involving fewer combatants (less than half that of the I/I War).
-2) a better educated populace with far more resources and industries
-3) orders of magnitude more foreign support, offsetting factor 1. Whether to send boys to work or to war becomes less of an internal conflict = greater percentage of available manpower poll goes to war.
-4) donors have strategic interests in loss/victory, which was not the case in I/I War
and the list is longer than that. Russia cannot win this war as long as Europe/Nato remains united in support. It can never overcome the logistical power of Europe/Nato. Even though it does have a larger manpower base, its internal inefficiencies prevent it from being able to bring that advantage to bear. It cannot recruit, train, transport, and most importantly equip enough, fast enough. And it's lack of international support means it must draw greater percentages of military aged men into the workforce rather than the army. They recently did a workplace draft roundup on the floor of the Lada plant (largest auto plant in the world).
This conflict is far more even than simple demographics would suggest.
Russia cannot win it.