Reply To: Russian Tensions
Tinky Winky said “Russia has annexed huge swathes of resource rich territory, grown its population and all at the cost of less than 20-30,000 lives. Remind me, what’s this “catastrophic error” of which you speak?”
There we have, fully exposed, the anti working class rhetoric of TW. The mineral wealth and resources annexed will not of course be used for the benefit of the vast majority (working class) of that population, any more that it was used for the benefit of the working class when it was part of the Ukraine.
What is catastrophic asks TW, the catastrophy is the families bereft following the deaths of their loved ones, the children who have lost their fathers and perhaps mothers, the mothers and fathers grieving the deaths of their beloved children, the long term impact of these deaths on all of the family, the post traumatic stress left on the survivors, the impact of children and family living with those who have suffered PTS, the destruction of houses and resources created by working class people through their hard work, to name just a few catastrophic consequences. All of this to enrich the already fabuloously rich.
He has also exposed by his own words what has really occured. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Annex” as meaning “add (territory) to one’s own territory by apropriation”. Of course as Marxists, we are only interested in ensuring that the expropriators are expropriated.
Surprisingly though, TW has actually stumbled oafishly across a relevant “fact”, however typically he has misinterperated that “fact” as could be expected.
Tinky Winky has stated that the number of Russian Deaths is in the 20,000 to 30,000 deaths. This is probably an underestimation, as the deaths are continuing as we speak. Other estimates of 200,000 deaths are probably equally wide of the mark.
If we, for argument’s, sake work on a death toll of 35,000 (probably quite a conservative number) and compare this to war casualties in recent conflicts, it is clear that this death toll for one year of conflict is very high.
The estimated US deaths in the Korean War was 36,516 deaths over 3 years. An attrition rate of 12,000 deaths a year
The estimated death toll in the Vietnam War was 58,220 deaths over the roughly 10 year span of direct US involvement an attrition rate of 5-6,000 deaths a year
The official Soviet death toll for the Soviet Afghan war was given as 14,453 with estimates rising up to about 26,000 deaths during a 10 year campaign an attrition rate of perhaps 2,000 deaths per year.
That means the death rate that TW has agreed has occured in less than one year is greater than the combined yearly average deaths of the US deaths in Korea and Vietnam and the Soviet deaths in Afghanistan.
Considering the fact that the Vietnam and Afghan Wars led to lots of political instability in the US and USSR and the facts that no official NATO lives are being lost, that Russia doesn’t seem to be making any great progress in their offensives, being pushed back on several fronts and at least at the moment the Ukraine doesn’t seem to be about to over run, the situation might actually be one that US NATO are generally happy about.
Yes they have lost a lot of weapons, but for them the up sides are that the majority of NATO countries are upping their military budgets, the fuel crisis appears to have passed without major issue, they are likely to have Sweden and Finland added to their coalition, there is always the possiblity of war weariness arising in Russia and they get the chance to test out their weaponry without losing lives to NATO forces, whilst Russia is also losing miliary hardware, but is also losing soldiers and suppport infrastructure.
Given this, some elements of the NATO alliance and their general staff, may actually see this whole bloodbath as something positive. Unfortunately this will not be the case for the workers who pay for this fiasco with their lives and their limbs.
