Some of the comments on the link by James_Miller exactly six months ago provided very specific estimates of how the events might turn out:
James_Miller:
- The odds of Russian intervening militarily = 40%.
- The odds of the Russians losing the conventional battle (perhaps because of NATO intervention) conditional on them entering = 30%.
- The odds of the Russians resorting to nuclear weapons conditional on them losing the conventional battle = 20%.
Me:
"Russians intervening militarily" could be anything from posturing to weapon shipments to a surgical strike to a Czechoslovakia-style tank-roll or Afghanistan invasion. My guess that the odds of the latter is below 5%.
A bet between James_Miller and solipsist:
I will bet you $20 U.S. (mine) vs $100 (yours) that Russian tanks will be involved in combat in the Ukraine within 60 days. So in 60 days I will pay you $20 if I lose the bet, but you pay me $100 if I win.
While it is hard to do any meaningful calibration based on a single event, there must be lessons to learn from it. Given that Russian armored columns are said to capture key Ukrainian towns today, the first part of James_Miller's prediction has come true, even if it took 3 times longer than he estimated.
Note that even the most pessimistic person in that conversation (James) was probably too optimistic. My estimate of 5% appears way too low in retrospect, and I would probably bump it to 50% for a similar event in the future.
Now, given that the first prediction came true, how would one reevaluate the odds of the two further escalations he listed? I still feel that there is no way there will be a "conventional battle" between Russia and NATO, but having just been proven wrong makes me doubt my assumptions. If anything, maybe I should give more weight to what James_Miller (or at least Dan Carlin) has to say on the issue. And if I had any skin in the game, I would probably be even more cautious.
But Russia still has a "democratic" political structure, everyone off course knows that it's not like this in reality and only one party exists. But soon in 2018 there'll be new president elections and that's last term for Putin. Uncertainty that's what we will get for sure
I'm living in Russia however I don't watch TV and read newspapers, but I can say for sure, that Russian Invaders are proclaimed heroes, and NATO guys as Evil. And It's not a surprise for me that on the other side of the Globe opinion is exactly the contrary. My personal view of the problem is that Putin and Obama are both worth each other, they are strong leaders and will they never stop if there is a chance to gain more power. Situation in Ukraine is imho this - Ukranian side completely entangled in their own problems, and they thought that it was Russia who they must blame and gone comletely nuts, then West gave them weapons and so on
Too much globalization (russialization in this case) is hard to contol, Russia has enormous territory, we already got Crimea which is a port, and got unfriendly response from the world. I expect things to calm down for next 4 years I assume probability of 5% of the invasion to any other country
As someone in America, I can tell you the idea of calling Obama a "strong leader" sounds hilarious.