If Ukraine holds on, how long would they have to hold for until Russia implodes?
Guys: You know that if you ruin the US with Trump, then even if you can undo the sanctions, you still won't have access to all these Western markets that you're so upset you can't have access to. You won't become any better at war, and all of a sudden start being able to win against a modern army. All you'll do is replace lack of access to a working market with working access to a broken market.
There's a maximum size that any nation-state's operation can grow to, under a king. It's just not sustainable to make it work on a big scale if people have no reason to care because it's all under someone else's thumb. It's why all the European powers were always fractured from each other like a big game of Civilization. The Soviet state at least pretended to care and take care of its people, and had people loyal to the cause, so it was able to grow to half the world. Once it was all under King Putin, it collapsed to its present sorry state and then just stayed there.
The US is way above that size limit. If Trump's movement succeeds as remaking it as a kingdom, which it has a pretty credible shot at doing, the west is fucked. But that still doesn't mean you'll all of a sudden have silicon valley and Hollywood. It just means no one will have it.
You've had 25 years to make your thing thrive. Plenty of people have done it. China did. It's not just us being mean to you.
China did
Oh yeah, China... There's an economic and societal model I really dig right there.
I'm not saying I want to copy their model here. I'm just saying that materially, they've got it figured out and got their operation working, with most of their people living reasonably well and supportive of the state, and a big place on the world stage.
I'll put it this way: Look at the war between Russia and Ukraine, with the mouse absolutely tearing up the cat for 2 years and counting now, and then imagine how a war between Russia and China would go.
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