Shortform Thoughts

In War on the Rocks, Collin Meisel and Mathew Burrows write, "Russia Can Afford To Take A Beating In Ukraine". Russian forces in Ukraine are suffering 400,000 casualties a year. While this sounds, and is, horrendous, they argue that it is unfortunately sustainable for Russia. Russian force replenishment has gone better than anticipated, and the Russian military is actually 15% larger today than it was at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. They also point out that Russia still holds an advantage in artillery shell production over the West, producing 250,000 shells a month as compared to a combined US and EU production of 113,000. Finally, they point out that, although Russia has lost a substantial amount of armor in Ukraine, it is still producing approximately 100 new tanks each month, and can sustain armor losses into at least 2026.

While I agree with the overall conclusion of the piece, I do think it's overly optimistic in its assessment of Russian manpower. The estimates of Russian manpower are based on demographics, showing that Russia still has a large advantage in total numbers of military-aged males over Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin isn't conscripting soldiers. He is attempting to persuade them to go to war, via signing bonuses, hazard pay and death benefits for soldiers' families. This indicates that Putin feels constrained from arbitrarily increasing the level of Russian manpower in the war. Therefore, the level of Russian manpower isn't constrained by demography alone, but also by Russian economic performance. While Russian economic performance thus far has been better than expected, especially given the impact of Western sanctions, there is no guarantee that this overachievement will continue.

I also think that the authors have made some mistakes in their assessment of Russian armor reserves. They cite this Forbes article on Russian T-72 tanks in storage, and argue that Russia still has deep reserves of relatively modern tanks. However, as the article points out, it's likely that those tanks are still in storage because they have deteriorated too badly to be easily refurbished and sent to the front. Whether they can be fixed up with further effort and turned back into effective fighting vehicles remains to be seen, and I don't think it's fair to count those T-72s as part of Russian armor reserves.

All that said, I'm not sure how much these critiques change the conclusion. Russia does appear to be successfully sustaining its effort in Ukraine, at least for now, and seems to have enough reserves to last through the end of the year. Although the Russian military is taking devastating losses, it is not losing cohesion, and there are few reports of large scale surrenders, desertions or mutinies that would indicate an army on the brink of collapse. While the article might be overly optimistic, I do think the headline, "Russia Can Afford To Take A Beating In Ukraine," rings true.

I was reading Construction Physics' article on the influence of real estate developers on modern architecture, and I realized that the key to understanding Donald Trump's mindset is to realize that he's a real estate developer. A real estate developer doesn't design buildings. He has architects and engineers for that. He doesn't finalize the little details of contracts. He has accountants and lawyers for that. His job is to get the principals in the room, sell them on a vision, and get them to sign a letter of intent to commit money towards a particular project. After that, if the project falls through, that's unfortunate, but these things happen sometimes.

Trump is like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. He wants to close the deal. He wants people to "sign on the line that which is dotted". This is why Trump hails interim agreements, like the one just signed with China as final. It's why he never seems to follow up when deals go bad. As far as he's concerned, he's closed the deal. He's earned his commission. If the deal falls apart later, that's not his problem.

Unfortunately, this can be exploited. Canny adversaries can enthusiastically agree to an interim agreement which is advantageous to them, and stall during the negotiations for the final agreement.