There are ways to sabotage Russian war capacities by focusing on its three major bottlenecks: demographic, economic & institutional. Let's start with demography. Russian started this war suffering from the shortage of young draftable males🧵
That's a very underrated fact. Many argue that the demographic pressure of growing population (Africa, Middle East) increases a risk of war/revolution. But Russia doesn't have this pressure. Compare it's demographic pyramid with Syria: Russia's quickly depopulating. It grew old
In fact, Russian-Ukrainian war is may be the first major war between two quickly depopulating nations. For this reason it can't be directly compared to Iran-Iraq or other conventional wars between relatively big but young powers. Russia, Ukraine are both old. Few youngsters there
Russian performance in this war will be different from the past. Yes, before WWII Russia would fight real wars all the time. But back then Russia was younger. Its demographic pyramid of 1927 looks more like Syria than like modern Russia
Today an average age in Russia 40 years. In 1914 in the age of huge families and no family planning it was 16 years old. Russia was a country of adolescents much like Black Africa is today. This demographic pressure might explain excesses of revolution and civil war of 1917-1921
Before the revolution birth control was virtually unknown, almost all of Russian population rural, people were subsistence farmers and their families tend to be very big. Thus Russia had a constant excess of youth which its emperors could utilise for their imperial delusions
XX century put end to this. Death toll of collectivisation, purges, and the WWII was devastating. Consider this photo of public street dances in late 1940s. Girls are dancing together, cuz boys are dead. From the high school class of 1941 only 3% were alive by the end of the war
Even more important factors were industrialisation and urbanisation. In 1900 majority were substinence farmers living in their own houses. By 1960s they were waged workers living in small urban dorms. Both mom and dad had to work, birth control was available. Fertility dropped
That's what believers in based invincible Russia which always wins miss completely. Back then Russia was a country with Syria-style population pyramid and produced enough young males to sacrifice in endless conflicts. Young men were not a bottleneck. Now they are
That partially explains why Putin attacked Ukraine with such a small army and didn't immediately start mobilisation. There are not so many males to mobilise in the first place. Meanwhile Ukrainian-published videos of captured conscripts will damage the Putin's spring draft a lot
Now who fights in Putin's army? Well, that's pretty easy to answer. Most of file and rank of the Russian army are either current or former conscripts. They are young guys from small towns and usually underprivileged background. Richer, more privileged ones would dodge the draft
In a good Moscow school where I studied almost everyone dodged the draft. Those who were drafted were considered very unlucky or not that smart. Nobody would ever view those going to the army with respect. Draft was a misfortune, a bad accident, you should avoid
Those who get into the army are usually from poor families & small towns. Because richer/smarter/educated ones dodge it. Then these conscripts who don't know their rights will be persuaded, pressured or just forced to sign a contract and become контрактники professional soldier
So in the social dimension, Russian army is the army of poor guys from small towns. Their recruitment was conducted either by sheer force (призывники) or by a certain combination of force and persuasion (контрактники). Sometimes they just force conscripts to sign the contract
In the ethnic dimension it's even more interesting than that. With ethnic Russians quickly depopulating, minorities provide disproportionally high share of young draftable males. And I'm not talking about Kadyrov's troops
Chechnya is a vassal kingdom of Kadyrov in personal union with Russia. It's not an integral part of Russia and its troops are not part of Russian army.Chechen conscript don't go to Russian army, they go to its "Chechen regiments" which are led by and personally loyal to Kadyrov
Once again - Kadyrov's troops can have whatever BS bureaucratic labels - "army", "police", "FSB", etc. But being classified as parts of these branches of Russian regulars they're obedient only to their warlord. I described it here in more detailed way
I'm talking about normal Russian regulars. While Chechen conscripts go to "Russian regiments quartered in Chechnya" = private army of Kadyrov, Dagestani, Ingush, Kabarda and other minority conscripts go to regular Russian army and comprise every growing part of it
Consider this random list of wounded Russian soldiers in a hospital in Rostov Oblast (=wounded in Ukraine). Dagestani names comprise about a half of the list. Russian army is quickly becoming the army of minorities
Furthermore, I'm now getting a lot of messages from Central Asians whom authorities try to persuade/force into the army. It's not some sort of ideological decision. In a quickly depopulating country you have no choice but to impress immigrants there to keep the war going
Let's sum up. In the past, Russia launched huge continental wars and finished them at whatever cost. But it could pay this cost because in a country of huge peasant families and constant excess of youth they could easily sacrifice that youth for the sake of imperial grandeur
Now Russia is a low fertility depopulating country which accidentally started a major war. It didn't plan a war, it planned a nice and easy occupation. Much of early Russian losses are explained by Russian columns simply entering into the cities and being immediately destroyed
Unlike any major war Russia launched before, now it will have to proceed with a shortage of youth. Young males are a major bottleneck now. That's why Russian regular army is much less Russian than in any previous epoch since 16th c. It's an army of minorities & provincial poor
Hence policy recommendation. Open the green corridor. Many Russian soldiers would actively look for the ways out but they don't want to sit in Ukrainian prison СИЗО which happens if they just surrender. So, open the corridor abroad to any poor warm country
Tourist industry of Turkey, Egypt, etc is now suffering for the lack of Russian tourists. Thus:
1. Rent cheap hostels, cheap hotels, whatever 2. Ship their those who surrendered till the end of the war. Give them bed + food 3. Take photos with them there, distribute in Telegram
That would have huge impact on the troops morale which you probably underestimate it. Human behaviour is much more situation specific than we'd like to admit. Russian soldiers stood to death at Borodino but they deserted away en masse in France. Cuz they had the way out
We very much overestimate human (and our own) "integrity" and "consistency". In fact our behaviour is very situation specific and depends on circumstances. We do what we like (and can do) and then make up justifications why this was right, limited only by our verbal intelligence
NB it shouldn't be a "good" way out. It shouldn't be a way out with clear understanding what to do next and other irrelevant BS. Situation this guys are facing looks like this. The way out shouldn't be perfect, it just has to exist and they should know it does
Furthermore, apart from bad & food for surrender give them cash for destroying the equipment and documenting it. Like you put the wrong oil to the truck engine and destroyed it? 2 thousand bucks. 2% of active hustlers are enough to inflict enormous damage on the fighting capacity
We also underestimate how many of our social mechanisms work only because of mutual trust. Only because almost nobody of those engaged will seek to disrupt them for its own sake. 2% of saboteurs is very, very much and inflicts enormous damage. Equipment destroyed, trust destroyed
Ofc you can invest money into destroying Russian army. That works. But paying Russian soldiers to destroy Russian army is way more cost-effective. They know how to do it, also they're poor and value money more. Besides, many of them have very low motivation
Additional benefit would be: if desertion from the Russian army increases, Russian commandment will be much more reluctant to send any low morale (=almost any) troops to Ukraine. If you know significant number defect to the enemy, you vet them harder and recruit less soldiers
Many imagine Russian army being proud, exhilarated and very well respected. Not quite. Russian army has no respect at all. Just look how this TV host yells on a veteran who suggests making a minute of silence for "our boys in Ukraine"
You can read a more detailed account of Russian army with mafia racketeering Syrian veterans and nuclear rockets bases, with conscripts being forced into gay prostitution here
Russian fighting capacity will hugely deteriorate if you give a way out to the closest warm countries with bed, food, and cash payments for proven sabotage. Done ASAP that would be very detrimental for Russian fighting capacity, manpower being its major bottleneck. End of 🧵
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.
One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking