The Answer To My Question
What's the deal with these countries?
A couple of days ago I asked a question on Twitter. For asking that question I was met with mostly arguments and people calling me idiot (even had to smack 2 BowTieds that got disrespectful). There were a handful of knowledgeable people that understood what I was getting at but today I’ll explain it to everyone.
Russia’s Stated Goals
First We’ll start with Russia’s “stated” complaint’s/Goals of course all of this can be false. No one can know their actual reasons behind closed doors.
1) Liberate Donbas
2)NATO expansion
First we’ll start with “liberate Donbas” that reasoning holds no weight because they went further than the Donbas region. So we have to at least think right now they want a huge part of eastern Ukraine and the southern black sea coast.
As for the second part ‘NATO expansion’ that failed because more countries want to be part of NATO than ever before out of fear of Russia including Finland which would be detrimental to Russian security if that happens. Finland borders Russia up on it’s northern side very close to Moscow and the Fins would just have a field day penetrating Russia.
Take a look at the map.
Ok, since both of those goals were off let’s go with the taking eastern Ukraine and the southern coast one.
Ukraine
Let’s take a quick dive into Ukraine and what owning it offers you. We’ll start with major exports before Covid. This is data from the OEC.
So lots of corn, wheat, iron and they export a total of 54.5 Billion dollars with a GDP of $153.9 billion. Just for comparison Angola in Africa has a GDP of $124.7 billion. So Ukraine even at it’s peak in 2019 was dam near a third world country.
Russia
Now let’s take a peek at Russia
Shit, talk about big oil! Russia’s GDP is 1.7 trillion with a pre covid export of 416 Billion. For comparison Brazil as a GDP of 1.6 trillion, lol right? When you start looking at things this way it all starts to make more sense. Let’s look at Russia’s demographics
So ok, majority of the Russian population is 30-40 years old and they don’t have many young people under 29 relative to their total.
Risk to Benefit
I stated in my tweet that Ukraine has no strategic value, of course I was being a bit hyperbolic but not entirely. Something that has strategic value is something that gives you a strategic advantage.
My argument is that taking Ukraine does not give Russia a strategic advantage. Geographically Ukraine is a flat land so not much advantage there. Ukraine has the GDP of a third world country and their main exports are wheat and corn. So unless Russia has a hard-on for gritz I don’t really see what’s there for them in terms of natural resources.
Well ok, let’s say they wanted a world stopping amount of Gritz, what are the risks? Losing ten of thousands of men plus billions and billions of dollars of military equipment and vehicles that cannot be easily replaced. In facts, it would take them decades to replace because the Russia weapons industry is nothing to brag home about. Weapons aside loosing young men is very damaging to the Russian state because of the demographic pyramid chart that I’ve showed you earlier. If they Run out of young men under 29 (and they are) they’re toast economically and security wise for a long long time because they need workers and uh.. a military/law enforcement to guard that HUGE swath of land they got.
So take some time to think about all of this and tell me how “strategic” Ukraine is. According to the US there already has been about 100k casualties on both sides of the war.
Oh but but.. What about access to the Black sea? They already had access to the black sea before the war by taking Crimea.
Other Theory
The other theory people brought up is Russia is trying to seal off some paths to make itself harder to invade. While that’s a cute theory, Russia can’t even get through Ukraine without mobilizing their population, So I doubt they could take on Poland, Romania and the Baltics to secure these “paths”.
China Taiwan
In my tweet I also stated that Taiwan has no strategic value. Well this one is easy if you just use your brain.
Taiwan is not a well of natural resources but they sure are good at this semi conductor thing. So it does have strategic value? Sure just not in a war. If you start an all out war with Taiwan (that also has a modern military, an Airforce with 600 aircraft and about a 100 ship navy 69 if you don’t count the fast missile boats) there are no guarantees that those chip factories won’t be destroyed in the conflict and their talent that’s highly sought after by the world won’t just flee. To add salt to injurie, Taiwan is also a very mountainous place. Plus it’s an Island, so the only route there is to make amphibious landings and try to no eat an anti-ship missile after you dodge the aircraft.
Is it possible? Sure… But not without destroying the place and most of it’s value. The only way Taiwan has value is if you take it politically and keep everything in tact. I’m not exactly sure how you would go about doing that.
So, again… What is it that these guys want?