johnnycaffeine

Moving up on some of the recent news, for example: Germany vows to underwrite Ukraine’s long-range missile production

Investing in Ukraine will enable Kyiv to have a “substantial” number of long-range weapons this year, the German defense ministry said in a statement, with the first deliveries set to take place in just a few weeks’ time.

So it's definitely a strong commitment on the part of Germany. 

Also, Lockheed Martin has announced a doubling of its HIMARS production is now online, so there will be more of it to go around. 

I'm moving up on seeing some of the other rationales. Although Iran has described Israel's attack as a "declaration of war" (Fox News), Israeli officials have not in their statements declared a war on Iran that I can find, so I'm not sure this part has actually been met: "if another country declares war on Iran". Netanyahu's statement for example is here.  So Iran may have in their rhetoric portrayed it as a declaration of war by Israel, but that is not what this question is asking.

So I think it's important not to over-update until we see Iran's retaliation and their rhetoric surrounding it. But at the same it is necessary to update.

Updating based on the attack by Israel. I have searched in various Iranian media outlets and am not seeing anything about a possible declaration of war yet, but who knows. 

I had not seen the other rationales or the Crowd forecast before researching this, but now that I have, I think this is a high probability. According to White & Case in their China update:

From September 1, 2025, new 'Labeling Rules' will come into effect, making it mandatory for AI-generated content to be implicitly labeled, and explicitly labeled where applicable. Explicit labels are those that are easily perceived by users and must be added to text, audio, images, videos, and virtual scenes, while implicit labels are embedded within the file's metadata.3
In addition, on April 25, 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of China jointly released three national standards aimed at enhancing the security and governance of generative AI. These standards will officially take effect on November 1, 2025.

So this is a question of whether the implementation gets delayed, I would think. 

At least going by the history, I can't see that China has a track record of delays in nearly the same way that Western countries such as the US do. So I think 98% is probably good for now.

Certainly not Argentina in this short amount of time. The country is now in budget surplus, and there has been a big IMF disbursement. 

Maintaining Bolivia at 10%. Rio Times article on the severe challenges Bolivia is facing, with dwindling foreign reserves, a dwindling economy, and a collapse in exports. IMF article here from a few days ago on Bolivia's situation. It seems like the main factor when analyzing that country is the hydrocarbon exports. The best thing for Bolivia is high oil and natural gas prices. Government bonds have a yield of almost 18% a year (BondBlox), and I'm not sure I would take that bet. 

With Ecuador, Daniel Naboa winning re-election was a big deal in my view. IMF approved Ecuador for a new facility a few days ago. This may not have happened had there been uncertainties from the election going differently. 

The base rate for a given African country having a coup or coup attempt in a given ~half year period is something like 2%, so that's one possible floor for a given African country these days. 

Adding a few points for deepening ties between Russia and Togo. For example, this article came out a few days ago, reporting on Russia recruiting citizens of Togo to fight as mercenaries in the war in Ukraine. Togo is probably what a geopolitical analyst would consider an autocracy despite its recent moves to cast itself as a parliamentary democracy. And its ruler, Faure Gnassingbé, has been increasing ties with Russia. (Example) In short, Togo has a lot of the hallmarks of a country that has accepted a deployment of the Africa Corps. So this would not be a surprise if it happened, since we don't know what is going on behind the scenes. 

Confirmed previous forecast

Confirmed previous forecast

Confirmed previous forecast

Among the three, Estonia has the toughest geography if you were to invade, so I'll zero that one out for now. 

From the standpoint of strategic empathy, Putin has been frustrated in Ukraine. Even ignoring the drone raid on Russia's strategic bombers that just occurred, here are the frontlines today: 

Here were the frontlines in June 2023:

This is almost no progress in two years. This is despite Russia having over triple the population and over 11 times the GDP. 

It wouldn't make a lot of sense for Russia to open up new fronts, when it would need those troops for Ukraine. 

A lesson from the book The Dictator's Handbook is that the calculus is somewhat different from the perspective of authoritarian regimes when it comes to warfare:

1. Unlike with a democracy, autocrats don't have to worry so much about losses in battles or having lousy outcomes in a war itself. Look at Saddam Hussein for example who survived the disastrous Iran-Iraq War and then the first Gulf War. So the fight in Ukraine could keeping going on for a good long time. That by itself really wouldn't matter from the standpoint of Putin's political survival, in contrast to other factors like ensuring the oligarchs, top military brass, and other essential domestic supporters of Putin remain happy.  In a democracy, getting involved in a quagmire gets you the fate of French Prime Minister Joseph Laniel who was ousted after Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam or LBJ who was ousted a decade later largely due to America's own troubles in Vietnam. 

2. Unlike with a democracy, however, autocrats have trouble committing a massive amount of resources to a war. Resources have to be held back to keep the flow of money that keeps essential cronies rich, and a lot more effort needs to be devoted to survival of the regime unlike with a democracy.

Especially considered that second point, it's going to be tough for Russia to take over Ukraine at the moment or make much more progress. Until it can finish that war, it's unlikely to have much benefit in doubling down and launching more. As Sun Tzu put it:

The skillful general does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply wagons loaded more than twice. Once war is declared, he will not waste precious time in waiting for reinforcements, nor will he turn his army back for fresh supplies, but crosses the enemy's frontier without delay. The value of time--that is, being a little ahead of your opponent--has counted for more than either numerical superiority or the nicest calculations with regard to commissariat.

... Thus, when you capture spoils from the enemy, they must be used as rewards, so that all your men may have a keen desire to fight, each on his own account.

Russia probably could have succeeded in following Sun Tzu's advice in 2022, but it's now bogged down, well beyond what it should have done given its political realities. It doesn't seem likely that the war could reasonably expand until Russia can get out from that reality.