It's conceivable that China will capitalize on Russia's weakness and take back territory such as Manchuria. China might invade Siberia, where there are big oil fields.
8. There will be severe economic consequences. There is a school of thought that argues the war will only stop when Russia runs out of money; that is, when NATO countries stop buying Russian fossil fuel -- currently estimated at $1 billion per day. (Click Here )
However, there is an emerging school of thought that argues the war will end when Russia so depletes their military store that to continue the Ukrainian invasion would present Russia with a grave national security threat. In other words, Russia will have lost so many troops, tanks, trucks, and other weapons that they will not be able to adequately secure their vast territory.
The latter possibility once seemed unthinkable. Now it isn't. Russia has lost far more troops than they anticipated and cannot adequately replace them.
During the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost about one-quarter of their armored vehicles -- roughly 1200. They still have a lot of armored vehicles but they are not replenishing this supply and evidence suggests the existing store is poorly maintained. That suggests that by June, Russia will have lost more than half of their half of their armored vehicles.
The war may continue but it will soon have grave consequences for the Russian and Ukrainian economies. Russia exports fertilizer, and grain to the West. These exports will stop as well as Ukrainian agricultural exports. The cessation of Ukrainian agricultural exports will create a food crisis in the Mediterranean region. Writing in Common Dreams, Steven Devereux (Click Here) observed: "Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe, and Russia and Ukraine have both become major food exporters in recent years. In 2020 these two countries accounted for one third of the world's wheat trade and one quarter of the world's barley trade. Ukraine alone exported 15 percent of the world's maize and half of all sunflower oil traded globally." The war will drive up food prices.
9. The environmental consequences are unthinkable. Russia is the largest country in the world with 11 percent of the world landmass. It's unthinkable to seriously attack global climate change without the support of Russia. Nonetheless, under the present circumstances, that's not going to happen -- and is unlikely to happen until Putin is out of power. (Note that the effort to combat climate change has some support from all other major powers, including China, third largest, Brazil , fifth largest, India, seventh largest, and Kazakhstan, ninth largest.)
For the foreseeable future, the world will have to tackle climate change without the support of Russia,
10. Politics: We've started World War III, but the United States remains divided along political lines; According to the latest Pew Research Poll (Click Here ) "69% of Republicans [describe] Russia as an enemy." (Only 6 percent express confidence in Putin.) Nonetheless, there are huge partisan divide on the conduct of the war;.The latest Pew Research poll indicates that Americans are divided on the Biden Administration's handling of Russia's invasion of Ukraine: 47 percent strongly approve and 39 percent strongly disapprove. Opinion is divided along partisan lines: 69 percent of Democrats strongly approve and 67 percent of Republicans strongly disapprove.
It's difficult to understand what Republicans disapprove of since they seem to change their tune every day. The one continuing theme is that Republicans don't like Joe Biden.
But some Republicans have seen the light. Writing in the Washington Post(Click Here), Republican columnist Jennifer Rubin thinks that Biden has done a good job managing the war in Ukraine. "In our age of perpetual cynicism, distrust and discontent, it would be unheard of for [Republicans] to acknowledge that an administration is doing just about everything humanly possible to confront evil. But this administration is. For that, Biden deserves a great deal of credit."
Summary: Welcome to the new world order. We're not doing enough to combat climate change. Russia has launched World War III. And Republicans have lost their minds.
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