Currency is a natural evolution of commerce. Direct barter only works if the person selling what you need wants something you have.

Say you want to buy flowers. If the florist wants shoes and you only have bread or hammers to spare, then tough luck.

Any large society cannot function with such a clunky way to exchange goods/services. Currency is merely a proxy that allows both sides to trade their goods using a tool they both value similarly. Hell, some civilisations used giant boulders as currency… it’s hardly a new concept.

He’s a protoss main at heart.

Nothing new in the east.

As long as russia can keep pushing forward, they won’t care about losses. Even by UAF’s own admission, they will probably be forced to abandon Avdiivka in 2 months or so at the current rate of things.

The real important question is whether the western political climate turns for the better or worse. If Ukraine would get all the aid it needs and start pushing back, that’d be a whole different situation; but if the aid ebbs, this can turn into another finnish winter war where Russia gets away with annexing a bunch of territory.

Russia isn’t producing as much as they waste for sure, but to say they are hardly producing is a misconception.

They outproduce the west in artillery ammo on their own,for example. . They are also ramping drone production. They are shitty shaheds with virtually nothing great about them, but that does not mean they cannot cause damage by zergrushing a target with them.

Sure, currently they cannot make more than 200ish tanks a year, but if their stockpiles start running low, nothing stops them from mass producing shitty T55-alikes. Would those be useful against a par military? No way in hell. Would they be enough to enable zergrushing like at Avdiivka? Possibly.

At any rate, I wouldn’t count on the russian army running dry. Currently the western aid running out is more likely, sadly.

They won’t. The west has been meming that russia will run out of something or collapse any moment now… for months now. They will simply push the war economy harder and produce low quality but working vehicles when they start running so low.

Well, let’s see how things will be different now that it’s china and russia extracting wealth from them.

Thing is, Avdiivka is still slowly falling, similar to Bakhmut which the UAF could not retake in the end. And as long as they make creeping progress, russians don’t mind disproportionate casualties. Adding in the fact that GOP may cause the US to completely drop support in 2024, I don’t see much to be positive about.

I don’t know if that’s another 10 months or 10 years but there is bound to be a limit.

The same goes for Ukraine as well, though. And judging by how much their foreign aid is dropping and them running out of artillery ammunition, I’m no longer that sure that it’s russia who is reaching their limitations first.

USA being “world police” is more of a meme than an actual thing. The policing USA does is more to ensure its own soft power and control over the global economy, and not actually taking a principled stand based on morals. Even the current Ukraine adventure is more a game to destroy the russian war machine than to save Ukraine, keeping Ukraine free and independent is more of a side-effect. Not that the EU is much better, I feel the EU is more afraid of bordering russia than genuinely helping Ukraine stay independent.

EU countries pay roughly half as much on healthcare per capita than US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/#:~:text=In 2022%2C the United States,highest per capita health expenditure.

Western partners prove themselves unreliable. That’s what eroding your own soft power looks like.

Eh, I get what they are trying to go for, but this kind of appeasement won’t fix a group that doesn’t believe in the democracy they live in. What, will they also ban drawing Mohammed since it also upsets muslims and thus incites violence?

If these people want sariah so bad, they shouldn’t get 6 months but rather assistance to get citizenship and then a one way ticket to the country of their choosing.

That or mailbombs.

If you don’t know what soft power is, you could give yourself a favour and try googling it. No matter how you spin it, a lot of countries attempting to resist China (and Russia or Iran) will start wondering after this absolute struggle of a support.

That’s absolutely great for NATO members, but not for allies which I outlined above. Being a reliable ally is paramount to maintain soft power… given how Ukraine is turning out, if I were say the Philippines, I’d be really concerned about the US support in a potential conflict with China.

If you are an ally of US or NATO in general, the conflict in Ukraine is probably a rude awakening as to what you can expect if you get into a conflict.

Thanks for funding these bastards, Merkel.

The masses are pretty okay with the war, though. Not happy, but certainly not disgruntled enough to do something either.