The thread on thoughts over time as to how and when the Ukraine war will end

[Vosem]

In principle, without substantial aid from China, Russia's war-making abilities will be strongly degraded by this coming winter, and in the presence of continued Western aid Ukraine should be able to reconquer most lost territories. Kind of paradoxically I suspect that there'll be more Western distaste for arming Ukraine if they're obviously advancing, since it is easier to sell aid for a side that is clearly losing than one that seems to be doing fine. (The scenario under which the Russian effort collapses, especially if the collapse is pretty sudden, is probably the most dangerous one with respect to WMD use. It is also conceivable that the Russian effort might collapse when there is a change in leadership, such as when Putin dies, but I think Putin is unlikely to leave power over the next year, and under present conditions it really doesn't seem like Russia has the materiel to fight for very much longer.)

In the presence of aid from China, at current speeds there's no reason the war couldn't go on for a very long period of time; like a decade or so. Under these conditions Russia probably eventually takes a Pyrrhic victory, because after a certain point it really will be true that they can throw more bodies at the front than the Ukrainians can. Ukraine "wins" in the event of a direct 1991-style Western intervention, but it seems like this is very unlikely to happen in a collapse scenario. Even more generally, I loathe to say something like 'under these conditions the war could continue for a decade', because it feels impossible to tell what the most salient differences will be between the world of 2023 and the world of 2033.

[Vosem]

The Yugoslav wars went on for 4 years until Paula Jones got Bill Clinton in trouble in court.

Eh?

Everytime Bill Clinton had a sex scandal, he bombed a country.
It inspired Wag the Dog.

Unfortunately or not, Biden is probably too old to have sex, though I'm sure he had plenty of it when he was younger.

Gonna leave a comment here purely to note that this is an excellent movie that my AP Government class watched back in 2014. Good times.