Imagine what West Germany would have been like if they had not been forced to pretend they were sorry for being Nazis and if they had gotten IMF structural adjustment programmes instead of a Marshall plan.
Completely depends on whatever the negotiated deal that ends the war is, but one thing you may count on is a half-hearted to 75%-hearted western attempt to rebuild the western-aligned part of Ukraine, I say this because for the most part what's going to get done is also what will make german/french/british/american companies money, other stuff not so much, and that's still predicated on the EU remaining halfway stable and not in its own internal serious crisis, which would make ukraine aid unpalatable.
I think the stuff that you saw america do in the cold war to build up anti-communist bastions like Japan and South Korea, so essentially planned industrialization with western enterprises moving to ukraine and easy access to US markets are NOT likely to be done, because for one there's a lot less of that industry left (German has its own internal debate about whether to diversify from or intensify its manufacturing sector) and these economies are just a lot less healthy, yeah america can do anything but do americans feel like that's true? Wouldn't there be pushback for policies that favor ukraine at the expense of americans? Trump wanting to pull out is already a sign of that.
And I think you 100% CANNOT guarantee Ukraine actually being let into NATO or the EU, Nato because, at the end of the day, without certain guarantees from Russia and Ukraine, and changes in both these countries (more easily in ukraine) I think the Nato people understand that Ukraine-Russia relations COULD worsen again to the point that there's another military conflict between them, and NATO will actually have to decide if it wants to end the world in nuclear apocalypse over some city in cyrilic that no one can point on a map (kiv keiv, idc what you call it), and this is beside the point but my personal opinion is that it wouldn't, Putin could call the bluff and invade estonia tomorrow because at the end of the day, the decision for a nuclear response will be made in places that won't be affected by Russia invading some random eastern european country, the actual text of article 5 talks about "respond appropriately" or something, it doesn't require a nuclear response and I think America would use it as justification to not end the world. So, in sum, might as well just not let Ukraine in, since it's a liability and a risk.
Regarding the EU, I think everyone (except Orban) can say in 2024, when the real choice is far in the future, that they'd allow Ukraine into the european union and find a place to integrate it in the EU market, but the people saying "Yes" now won't be the people actually deciding in, say 2030, on what to do with Ukraine, and the EU has losers, my country for example Portugal, but also Greece and Italy, and Ireland if they are forced to stop being a tax haven, that have literally 0 to win by letting Ukraine in and having it gobble up EU funds (which btw, are not charity, they're bribe money so shit doesn't get SO BAD in the recipient countries that they'll destabilize), now there's a lot of "Europeanism" (as in the European branch of American Nationalism) in these loser countries which makes going against EU decisions politically difficult, but that's right now, if shit gets worse in the future that will probably change. Also take into account that Ukraine is a big country with a lot of people, like, what do you actually do with it in the EU market? What do you have them do? Eastern Europe was integrated into the german industrial complex but that was a time when those sectors were GROWING, they GREW into the new EU countries, that shit isn't going to grow into ukraine because 1-it might be in recession by then and 2-germans nowadays will probably want to hold on to it. So, in sum, the EU has enough problems WITHOUT Ukraine, and Ukraine has enough problems on its own, there's not guarantee that the EU will have the capacity to actually integrate Ukraine without generating too many grievances
So it's fucked, it's a fucked country as countries usually are when they lose wars (or when they are made to lose wars, not because they could've ever won but because they could've negotiated out of it early instead of fighting to lose more).
TIP: Listen to the blowback season 1 episode on america's approach to "rebuilding" Iraq, how much of a ideological project of neoliberal grift it was, with the goal of privatizing state owned companies as some kind of "fix all" solution and taking precedence over actually helping people. Now, there's a lot less of that ideology around, and you can presume that the west will be more generous to a european country than to iraq, but then again, it might be the same thing again.
East Ukraine will be annexed by Russia. It's a fringe territory that just experienced a war, so it'll mostly stay poor, except some of the port cities, which prosper.
West Ukraine will remain an independent nation formally, but exactly who they'll be beholden to depends on how long the war continues and how strong Russia's position is (the longer the west forces this to drag out, the stronger Russia's position). If the war ended today, Ukraine would be hollowed out by western interests from all the privatization, deals, post-reconstruction poverty, etc. If the war keeps going, Russia will pick up more key businesses and resources in the negotiation, and the west will demand the same if not more from the remnants, hollowing it out even more. I don't think there's a point where the whole thing goes to Russia no matter how strong their position becomes, because I think they realize that the US would escalate even further if the finance vampires didn't get their promised blood.
All I know is Poland's got to be all 
that this time the rupture and Europe/Asia partition is happening east past their borders for the first time since, what, the Golden Horde?
also all ukraine'' assets getting bought up for cheap by western monopolists in the US and Europe. dragon capital is one, co-owned by Soros who's been financially involved in Ukraine since the 90s.
Paraguay after War of Triple Alliance.
Slavic Afghanistan. A sinkhole for foreign aid and CIA-front NGOs
Is modern-day taliban-controlled Afghanistan a sinkhole for foreign aid and CIA-front NGOs? I have a shallow understanding of Afghanistan and I thought that Amerikkka just said "fuck this shit" and succumbed to the graveyard of empires.
CIA still bankrolls every anti-Taliban organisation they could contact.
The Baloch Liberation Army and ISIS-K somehow grew significantly since 2022 when they started targeting Chinese workers in Afghanistan and Pakistan
They'll get some foreign aid money and will immediately be siphoned off by organizations and individuals with power coming directly from western capital.
Parts of it will just be uninhabitable for generations
The brain drain will continue and now a bunch of them will be addled by war experience with the worst being actual fascist soldiers that will probably end up doing "security" aka PMC merc shit in places like Africa
this guy will either retire and become an irritating celebrity of sorts or he becomes inconvenient for the true power and they pull the trigger on a corruption trial and put him in jail
These are my best guesses so far!
The Russian part goes to Russia and the Ukrainian part goes to BlackRock
Europe and American capital will vampire and leech it dry. Will Ukraine ever mass enough people to understand how much the US and NATO fucked it over? Don't know. There's going to be some blowback incident.
Russia will keep the territories. US and Europe will never forgive it and build weapon factories to amass new weaponry to attempt to WW3 it against Russia to again try to fracture it in 2040 to deny the after-boomers a peace dividend. 20 more years of indoctrinating the next wave of sacrifice fodder for it after all the military aged capable people are wiped damaged. RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA.
is not the sort of demographic diagram you want
For further reference, life expectancy is ~64 and ~74 for men and women respectively
continuous brain drains and amazon transport hubs in the country to send treats to Russia
Thankfully, I don't think Russia will need those western treats. They're doing well enough producing their own or buying from the global majority now.
eh, I've wait and see once the war is ''over'' and the west normalize with Russia again
It's worth waiting, yeah. But the bulk of those treat markets aren't coming back :D
varies greatly with whether or not the west ever ever comes to the negotiating table, which im genuinely not convinced of
I don't think there's a realistic chance of the west taking part in a peace and normalising relations with Russia anytime soon. But eventually access to cheap Russian resources will begin to look tempting to western Europe, especially if American exploitation of Europe becomes too obvious.
I don't think any serious movement towards normalisation will happen until Putin retires or dies.
I mean at some point Ukraine will just run out of soldiers and they'll have to negotiate. This kind of attritional war is hugely in Russia's favor and Ukraine has no way to win.
That said it'll be a while off. Apparently 73% of Ukrainians they're winning and that they'll go back to pre-2014 borders which would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
why would our ruling classes choose to end a forever war which is a huge boon to them? I dont think the average natoid has any conception of an end to this war other than total ukrainian victory
why would our ruling classes choose to end a forever war which is a huge boon to them?
Because they will eventually understand that they are facing existential threats elsewhere and they don't have the capacity to produce enough ammunition for every front.
There will never be an invasion of the US by its enemies as long as the US has nukes, so that one is ruled out.
The ruling class is indeed facing an existential threat in that the flow of global capital is being stifled as the periphery (including Europe itself) is turning away from the declining US and towards an ascending China.
Now you have thousands of pieces of military equipments that are obsolete, outdated and highly ineffective in war. How would you utilize them? You send them to Ukraine to get them blown up by Russia so your GDP can go up. Every single piece of equipment in Ukraine that is blown up translates into the US GDP going higher. The higher GDP gave the US a stronger currency which then allows it more power to extract from the Global South to entrench its control over the periphery of the empire.
So what is happening in Ukraine today is translating surplus military equipments that were overproduced during the US industrial powerhouse heyday into a fictitious GDP numbers that make the line go up.
That surplus is a deep well but it's not infinite. They have to cut it out eventually, and if your theory is correct then they'll cut the military aid to Ukraine sooner than later because it wouldn't make sense to send them the more modern equipment once all the stockpiled rusty weapons run out.
This is going to take a long time because of the way the equipments slowly trickle in, almost seem like they are deliberately taking their time.
Let’s take HIMARS for example, there are over 600 launchers built. The US had sent 16 launchers to Ukraine, and another 16 promised still slowly being delivered.
Same with M1 Abrams main battle tanks - 31 has been delivered to Ukraine, while there are several thousands left in storage in the US.
The munitions, on the other hand, do get depleted at a much faster rate, but there is no actual plan to replenish these stocks. Because unlike what many people think, America cannot win a military and industrial confrontation. A currency war is the only front where America truly has a chance, and what they’re doing now is translating outdated military and industrial capacity into financial strength.
I still think that the slow trickle of many different types of equipment is mostly about seeing what modern Russian equipment does to them. A big bloody R&D exercise.
There will never be an invasion of the US by its enemies as long as the US has nukes, so that one is ruled out.
When and if the US starts lobbing nukes (entirely possible) the reasoning behind that becomes a whole lot less, particularly for what humanity is left after the pyrrhic victory over YanKKKeestan. And if and when the US balkanizes or enters civil war- if it doesn't wind up nuking its own citizens in the process (also entirely possible) the entire world should see to it that the dreaded settler-imperialist, hegemonic ideology is rooted out in its entirety and support whatever factions might allow that.
Honestly I don't think there can ever be anything even remotely considered peace, unless the entirety of the US and the Anglosphere is de-Nazified (or rather, de-settlerized- not depopulated of whites, but having the entire ideology and even the mentality dealt with akin to the cultural revolution on steroids). Personally I live in an Anglo country as well and that's certainly my take on it, these are the countries that for the past 200~ years have been promoting every evil imaginable all across the globe (not talking about progressive things, those are the rare showings of humanity albeit often repurposed for PR instead), that have been waging war and genocide against indigeneity across the entire globe (taking up the leadership mantle of 500 years of western genocide and barbarism).
American and west European culture will have to be rebuilt and re-examined from the ground up, as the Soviets did (and with the assistance and oversight of the entire world upon the west, there should be no leeway). And American and west European state frameworks and institutions will also have to be rebuilt from the ground up, the rot is simply that deep.
This all sounds simultaneously fatalistic and idealistic- but my expectation is that the Yanks and the imperialist mentality will truly push things to their furthest point before there is any hope of changing course, that the spiral will only further continue, and for who knows how much longer, before finally they reach a breaking point. I hope not, but seeing the sheer pervasiveness and control of the neocons, of neoliberalism, and knowing firsthand how the culture of settlerism is, this is what I'd expect. And when things do reach that point (and if we all still live after, or not) whatever remains of humanity will have to ensure the settler-imperialist world system never develops again.
I'd genuinely like to be proven wrong, to see even the US/collective west with all their flaws disband NATO, ideally even start negotiating with or seek to join BRICS, and accept the end of empire with grace and get to work on resolving their own internal issues through peaceful reform if possible. Of course, we all know just how ridiculous, unprecedented, and structurally impossible any of this would be.
A lot of that ageing equipment costed a lot of tax payer money as well. So they offloaded some of that as well.
And half of them probably don’t work anymore. There have been numerous reports from the Ukrainian side that the Western equipments they received don’t work half the time.
It’s almost like they’re being sent there not to help Ukraine win the war, but to be rid of using Ukrainian lives.
Thats the thing. Ukraine's aircraft capabilities couldn't match Russia's and there was hamstring on bringing more f16 due to several factors. You get the clickbait such as ukraine developing their own cruise missiles (that has too many parts involved for me to believe out the gate) and such but things are looking rough. It was hamstrung to use long range missiles supplied by the US to targets inside Russia because of feara of Russian retaliation. They were in a tough position as it was but you can't even engage the enemy like that
That really depends on what terms the war ends on, but it's not gonna be anything good.
What are the chances it becomes split into East and West Ukraine? A kind of reboot of history in our new modern context.
John Mearsheimer made this prediction before the war started and considered a worse case scenario. The two Ukraines would inevitably become militarized like Germany was, only now Russia has no buffer. Cold war on a hair trigger.
"....first as a tragedy...then as a farce..."
East Ukraine will just be russia. While the west becomes a neo-colony of poland/usa. Idk if Romania or Hungary also wanna take some land, possible, but are pinecones and potato’s really worth it? Annexing those lands are a drain on the resources of romania/slovakia or hungary.
Russia will set up a puppet government. zelensky will form a government in exile if the fascists or mob of angry widows don't kill him before he tries to dip. Russia will invest lots into rebuilding ukraine. The west will be pissed that the new government doesn't respect any of the sales of public assets. 10-20 years later ukraine will ask to join russia entirely.
Best outcome, TBH.
Regime change and some punitive peace agreement that heavily favours Russia is my bet, explicitly including the Ukrainian recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea and Luhansk/Donetsk.Maybe a few other territories with high Russian populations.
They don't have the military capacity to annex or occupy vast areas, so only areas supportive of the Russian army will be possible to hold.
It'll likely be the start of some Ukrainian struggle session too, a bit like the uprisings and struggles that tore down the central powers and Russia after WW1.
Russia might have some issues too with recovering its military strength and adapting to a civilian economy - the war may be popular but that doesn't fix the contradictions in the russian economy.
adapting to a civilian economy
They have a civilian economy. This is not total war.
They do, but the war still has impacted working people in Russia. Perhaps to their long term benefits, but it takes a lot of work to suddenly reorganise your economy around particularly large mobilisations, a massive boycott and sanctions movement, infrastructure damage, and the dead/injured.
Kiev collapses and nazi factions vie for power armed with the collosal arsenals that have been poured in from amerikkka
A shithole country exporting crime and fascism to Europe and forgotten by the wider world, once in a while they might be in the news for doing a pogrom or something
NATO's favorite anti-Russia military base. More death. More despair.
Possible rule of Banderites.
Nothing good for Ukraine, only death.
They have massive external debt which will have to be "paid for".
Hopefully it collapses
Post-war, once all agribusiness is in the hands of giant American companies and the tech workers have been rounded up by American oligarchs to live in a tech village (work camp) with the lowest pay on record, the American oil interests will roll in and start using Ukraine as a test bed for new and dangerous energy technologies
Zelensky makes various moves to try to cling to power once the war ends. Western libs will spin this as somehow not a violation of democracy, but will quickly just stop talking about Ukraine outright. Once he’s deposed, the government will descend into a fight between the right wing faction that feels vaguely white nationalist, and the right wing faction that’s just straight up sporting fascist imagery. One of them will seize control in a violent coup and establish a dictatorship. Western libs, if they pay any attention at all, will act like this just came out of the blue and had nothing to do with the prolonged war.
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.