Traditionally, corrupt governments rely on bread and games to placate the hoi polloi.

Then why did you bring it up? My entire post was an argument that China has no incentive to want Russia to win the war. Did you intend to respond to some other post?

Why would China need Russia to win in Ukraine to gauge the West’s reaction? They’ve already seen the reaction to an invasion.

China has repeatedly shown that they have a much better tool against Taiwan than an invasion. Every time they want to rattle their sabre at Taiwan they blockade the entire island. They’ve done it many times and nobody does anything about it. Nobody has any realistic proposals on what they would do about it. Taiwan is a very densely populated island. It will run out of just about everything very quickly.

If China wanted to invade Russia. Why would they want Russia to win a war first? Why would it be easier for China to wait for hundreds of thousands of troops to be freed up. If China wanted to invade Russia, it’s hard to think of a better time than right now. They would be caught with their entire army on the wrong side of the country and most of the world lined up to support China, or at least stay out of the way. The only deterrent is Russia’s nuclear arsenal and that wouldn’t go away after a victory in Ukraine either.

It becomes fairly obvious when you think about what the likely effects would be.

Let’s say Russia achieves all it’s military obejctevies; they crush the Ukrainian military, the remaining civilian population offers an unconditional surrender, and Russia is able to completely annex Ukraine. Then what?

Then China’s biggest and most powerful neighbor would be even bigger and more powerful. Once hostilities ceased, Russia would slowly be able to start selling oil to the rest of the world again so China wouldn’t get as good a deal and the negotiations on Power of Siberia would get more complicated.

Where is the upside for China?

People like to romanticize the effectiveness of individual heroism but that’s not what wins wars.

France wasn’t liberated until a giant army showed up and pushed the Nazis out. That was mostly possible because the US had poured unprecedented resources into the war and the Soviets traded millions of lives with them.

What was the single biggest success of the French resistance?

What would those teenagers have done differently to not end up like the White Rose?

Yeah. It’s a shame she didn’t get together with all her teenage friends and face off against the SS. That definitely would have stopped them in their tracks.

I’m terrified of it.

I’ve talked to relatives on both sides of my family who have experience those times and they have nothing good to say about it.

My grandmother went from hoping the Nazis would ignore her, to hoping the American bombs would miss her, to hoping that the Russian soldiers wouldn’t rape her.

My grandfather had guys from both the KMT and the CPC point guns at his head to try to get him to join (on separate occasions) and ended up a refugee.

Both China and Austria are doing very nicely now but boy did it suck getting there.

As unlikable as this fellow may be, hunters are generally some of the strongest advocates for environmental protection.

They generally aren’t completely stupid and they know that their hobby depends on a thriving ecosystem so they tend to take action to preserve them.

I just watched some gangsters kidnap someone in broad daylight.

This is satire, right?