Another hint: September 11, 2001.
People are hand wringing about the House not passing Ukraine aid. Evidence has surfaced that Mike Johnson is very friendly to Russia
Mike Johnson’s Russian Funder
I can't find the cite now, but my partner said that Mike Johnson said today that nothing will move in the House the border is "fixed", but he refuses to consider the Senate bill because Donald Trump doesn't want the border fixed before next year. This means that not only the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid is stalled, but so is any legislation to fund the government.
Government shutdowns are toxic to the party that causes them. Always. The longer they go on, the more pain the party causing it suffers. It's almost certain the US government is going to shut down March 1. It looks like Mike Johnson and Donald Trump wants it to happen and they want the government to remain shut down until Jan 20, 2025. Trump thinks that the court cases will be paused by a government shutdown, but they won't. There are some people who are of the mistaken impression that MAGA is a majority who will celebrate breaking the government. I think Mike Johnson is in that camp. Plus he may be doing Putin's bidding.
The longer the shutdown happens, the greater the pressure to re-open the government will be. The Republicans who are sane, but afraid of the crazies who rule Congress may finally get enough of a backbone to oust Johnson and push something through to open the government, and hopefully send aid to our allies.
The worst case is this will last until Jan 2, but the Republicans will get clobbered in the election because people will be fed up with the government being held hostage.
It's possible that Johnson will cave in or a petition to bring a bill to re-open the government will force a vote. Considering Johnson's connections to the Kremlin, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in Johnson doing anything.
No matter what happens, we're probably in for at least a few weeks of shutdown. I don't know if the aid will make it through or not this year. It will probably pass next year.
I expect Europe and other allies will be able to get enough supplies to Ukraine to keep them in the fight defensively. Russia does not possess the capability to conduct combined arms mobile warfare. They failed to take Ukraine at the start of the war because their capability for mobile warfare was poor then. At this point it's degraded to nothing.
All Russia can do is throw masses of troops at the Ukrainian lines and they do take ground, but at staggering costs. I saw an estimate that at its current rate of losses Russia will be out of the reserve stocks of vehicles by summer. That's a pending cliff of capability loss. They are manufacturing some new vehicles but at a rate that is tiny compared to losses.
Ukraine is hurting, but Russia is not capable of overrunning the country unless Ukraine gives up. This year is more likely to be a year of marginal gains, but a mostly static ground war. Ukraine may further chip away in the naval war and who knows what will happen with the air war. F-16s will have some impact, Russia's air force has been degraded, but it's still much larger.
France has talked about sending troops to Ukraine. I think they would likely be used in non-combat roles, or holding quiet fronts like the Belarus border to free up Ukrainians to fight at the front.
