Historically Russia was waged seemingly inept wars, typically botched at the outset (1914, 1941, First Chechen War). They either eventually win by bulldozing their opponent, after mobilizing their huge human and material resources (1945, Second Chechen War), or give up when the country is in an actual (1905, 1917) or nascent (1856) revolt. Russia has fought against much more powerful enemies and alliances for much longer than a few weeks on many occasions. The idea that Putin will get bored or decide it was all a mistake and go home, or give up because of economic sanctions, is not especially convincing, though, as you say, who knows? Still, the smart bet would be that Russia, having jumped into this thing, will wage it to a favorable conclusion, even at what foreigners would consider to be stupid and excessive cost. That's their way.
I have a general sense, and I could be wrong, that technology no longer favors the historically successful Russian model of warfare.
Yes, they bulldozed the Chechens, but the Chechens were orders of magnitude weaker and poorly supported than the Ukrainians seem to be. Russian forces attacking Ukraine do not seem to be orders of magnitude stronger than the forces that won in Chechnya, and the Russian ability to replace losses seems to be more in doubt.
Sources generally suggest the Russian army launched the Chechen invasion with approximately 80k troops against the Chechen resistance of 20-30k. This puts it roughly in line with general military maxim than an attacker needs at least a 3-1 numerical advantage over a defender.
The Ukrainian invasion seems to have been of about 200k Russian forces against the Ukrainian armed forces which have approximately 240k active personnel. Quality matters, but it's worth considering that the Russians plainly don't have the sort of numerical advantage they've historically needed to be successful.
Russia has committed only 10% of their available military forces to the invasion of Ukraine. They have plenty of reserves to throw in if they deem it necessary.
It isn’t clear to me where Russia could draw the kind of manpower needed to overwhelm a mobilizing and motivated enemy. If anything, Ukraine is presumably training and arming a growing share of its population, and it isn’t out of the question that they will outnumber Russia’s extant forces sooner or later.
Unless Russia mobilizes a growing share of its youth for the war effort, or achieves a quick breakthrough with the forces at hand, can they really achieve the kind of numerical superiority you seem to imply? Can a country reeling from demographic decline throw waves of only sons into a grinding war of aggression?
Russia has more than three times as many active duty personnel. Two million Russian reservists could be called up. Russia has four times the population and ten times the GDP of Ukraine. It has about five times as many tanks and armored vehicles. In short, it is a mismatch. Of course no one knows how this will end. But in a war of attrition, Ukraine is clearly disfavored. The idea that Russia is about fall apart or give up in Ukraine, where the leadership clearly considers this war a matter of national survival, is wishful thinking and not well founded. Admiration for the Ukrainians and disgust with Putin and Russia is not putting people in an analytic mindset. And the idea that the Ukrainian people should become guerrillas if they lose, and fight against a ruthless occupier, dragging out the suffering and leading to the comprehensive devastation their country, is far from an obvious moral or practical choice. Accepting defeat when it happens and ending the bloodshed is sometimes the wiser course, as hard as it is. Ukraine's only hope for survival in open conflict with Russia would have been to have firmly committed alliance partners before hostilities broke out. As it is, powerful countries, especially the USA, which have nuclear weapons, might have been able to protect Ukraine or deter attack. But Ukraine did not have firm commitments in advance, and so Ukraine, tragically for the Ukrainians, is mostly on its own in this fight. The USA and NATO are unlikely to risk a nuclear war with Putin's Russia over Ukraine, despite strong public sentiment for Ukraine and admiration for their courage and fighting skill. Like the Finns in 1940, their pluck and the justice of their cause will not be enough, barring some miracle. Finding a negotiated solution as soon as possible would be the prudent course, though it would be unsatisfying to people safely in foreign countries putting blue and yellow flags on their social media pages. This entire episode is terrible.
Contrarianism also puts people out of an analytical mindset. People can be desperate to scold the "emotional" wishful thinking of the majority and equally throw out common sense and historical example.
Counting the strength of military forces is equally subject to overestimating them. There's the numbers on paper, and then there's the reality. This isn't uniquely true about Russia, it's true of almost all armed forces. The numbers on paper sound terrifying. Example after example shows why this is not the case.
The war up to this part allows some educated inferences about the Russian's belief in their own army and willingness to engage in total warfare. It's simply not true that we "know nothing"
1. They, in fact, didn't call up any reservists, even though basic military doctrine, and especially Russian basic military doctrine would call for this.
2. Instead, they attacked with much less than the necessary force that conventional doctrine called for.
3. It's not literally true that there's "no information" or "discussion" in Russian political discourse. The admission that conscripts were sent into combat against Russian law was clearly not popular and even the authoritarian regime had to respond to this reality.
4. Modern warfare moves more quickly. It took years to build up, train and deploy the Russian army to the point that they're underwhelming during the invasion. Training up a bunch of conscripts and putting them in 40 year old tanks is, at best, going to take a year to put them in position to reach whatever combat effectiveness they can reach. To date I haven't read any indication that the Russians are engaged in this kind of general call up. At this point, by the time the reserves were ready, the initial force will have long-since been spent.
Taken together, these facts provide a strong indication that, whether they have the theoretical capability to do so or not, the Russian regime doesn't have the appetite to reenact the Battle of Stalingrad. If we want to talk about wishful thinking, the obvious wishful thinking here is that the Russians vastly overestimated the capabilities of their standing army and underestimated the willingness and ability of the Ukrainians to fight back.
That doesn't mean that we should completely dismiss the possibility that Russia could mount a general call up and grind down the Ukrainians, but the evidence so far has pointed strongly against it. It would be politically difficult (even for a dictatorship) and further, there are serious doubts as to the effectiveness of the force they'd be able to bring to bear.
The Russians pretty clearly expected to win quickly, and failed. Do they give up? Or do they commit the resources they have not committed yet? Launching a full scale interstate war in Europe for the first time since 1945 is a big step. The Russian regime perceives this as a life or death matter. Not seeing any evidence that they will back down. Most likely there will be surprises ahead, there usually are. Still, sentiment aside, Ukraine is outmatched, unless other countries make a major commitment, or the regime collapses. Either could happen, though the risk of nuclear war suggests that other countries will not engage in open combat.
The likely case is that Russia can neither escalate dramatically nor give up.
It's a classic case of the regime dramatically miscalculating. They didn't actually expect this to become a matter of life and death for the regime. They expected a win in line with Chechnya, Georgia, Dagestan, Syria, etc. The dramatic failure has made it a matter of life and death for the regime, and either course of action poses very real but different existential threats.
There is evidence that they're not escalating, if not fully backing out.
1. The apparent lack of widespread mobilization.
2. The general softening of peace terms they're offering.
Well honestly in that case they can threathen the use of nukes and then use a very small warhead (2 kTon maybe) to show they are serious.
Russia can not loose this. If they do Russia will loose much standing in the non-west and Russian elite consensus is that this is an existential matter and Russia reserves the right tpo use nuclear weapons if existential threats to Russia arises.
Are the US gonna release their ICBMs/SLBMs for a non-NATO member - however much neurotic hate that exists against Russia among the ethnoreligious group that make up the bulk of neocons and the new post-68 american elite - because of historical revisionist persecution delusions and the mythical Pale of settlement-period (When this group still enjoyed much more rights than ordinary Russians who were only feudal subjects back then) - and 30 minutes later we have all cities with 250k+ population globally destroyed, including Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities?
I don't think so, but on the other hand this group is infamously vengeful (Almost every holiday they celebrate is a genocide of their former enemies) so I guess we will see. China will of course have a very large say in this, but they also have a very large interest in the Russians not loosing this war.
I understand there is a daunting mismatch, and you are right to remind us of it.
My point, which could have been clearer, was alluding to the political challenge of sending an army of reservists and conscripts into the maws of a war of aggression. Presumably, the political will to fight would be compromised long before Russia is bled dry. I understand that Ukraine is a geopolitically important prize for Russia, but I am not convinced that the Russian society is willing to put itself through total war to achieve maximalist offensive objectives
I’m not convinced of anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Objective criteria suggest that the Russians are going to win this thing as long as they stay in the fight. But we don’t know what’s going to happen. Russian society crumbled into revolution in 1905 and in 1917, but in both cases it was after repeated, shattering and humiliating defeats at the hands of peer competitors. So far they haven’t suffered anything on that scale. Unless we were all incinerated in a nuclear exchange, we will find out how this goes. It’s terribly sad that it is happening at all.
There is a meme that circulates periodically about how ppl pivot from being an "expert" on X to being an expert on Y (virology to Russia or something). https://ifunny.co/tags/slowik is a good example.
It has always struck me as silly. It's not expertise - it's critical reasoning, which allows for an intelligent person to study and have an opinion about a variety of topics. We all know that "expertise" is quite often useless or worse.
I think you make a really good and humble point here - you can read and learn - and then form an opinion, while still acknowledging that it may not be a perfect forecast. You don't have to be the tire guy. You can read what the tire guy says and then incorporate it into your mental model.
I would challenge this: "It's not expertise - it's critical reasoning... We all know that "expertise" is quite often useless".
Critical reasoning - being garbage in/garbage out kind of deal - in a wide open problem with incomplete information often misfires. Correct expertise on the other hand should work just fine.
How would you grade the expertise on display these past two years regarding SARS-2? Does your answer refute or affirm your premise?
You can even break down your answers as between the government (actions taken) response, and the public health (advice given) response, et al., for a more granular grading.
To answer your question, I would have to first separate policies and advise based on "expertise" and those based on "critical thinking". I don't have the visibility to do that.
The one example I know of clear "critical thinking" was the infamous model that predicted much more damage than occurred, perhaps leading to a lot of overreaction. But even there I cannot separate one from the other.
Its been fascinating to watch this war play out as an outsider in the US. The US media is almost completely ignoring the astroturfed 2014 "revolution" and the US role in it, while simultaneously also ignoring the far-right Neo-Nazis fighting for Ukraine.
It's very odd, seems like we're back in the post 9/11 era where big chunks of the mainstream actually want war and will go to any lengths to get it. I agree with your predictions Richard, but one wild card is some kind of false flag operation to draw the West into a direct war, could be this war's equivalent of "WMD's in Iraq"...
There's a heavy bias from inside a war towards making it seem closer than it really is. Political contests are much the same: check out the tone of fundraising emails even for incumbent politicians in a non-competitive race. This is partly because various forces are trying to convince you it's close, and partly because humans seem to have a psychological tendency to want to believe it's close. Can't let up now!
When you're sitting inside WW2 you think, "Oh wow, looks like the Third Reich might grow so powerful as to even invade the US and reign until the ending of the world." Afterwards: "Well duh, idiots, Germany never stood a chance, they were lucky they even managed to make a real war out of it, the collapse of France was a fluke."
I was only a kid during Desert Storm but I'll never forget being frightened after a news report convinced me that Saddam might start raining SCUD missiles upon the continental US, until my father assured me that was nonsense.
So my first order approximation is to say large conventional wars almost always eventually go to the side the conventional wisdom would have expected to win before the war started, provided it understood the alliance structure correctly. You will almost certainly have more doubt about the outcome from inside the war than before it started, but a majority of that doubt is coming from the effect I'm describing. Not to say setbacks aren't real and might be costly for the winner and even require settling for reduced war aims, but from inside the war everyone around you is going to be biased towards overestimating their significance to the outcome.
That's my somewhat jocular way of portraying the conventional wisdom and channeling a bit of Tooze and Overy, so take it up with them. But note that practically no one expected the collapse of France to happen as it did, either inside or outside the German leadership.
The collapse of France was not like the conquest of Poland, which everyone predicted. All Germany's other conquests were weaker countries still, and picked off one by one, so even more predictable.
In the end, the war turned out the way everyone in 1939 thought it probably would, with Germany buried beneath the sheer resources of its enemies, except for one major unforeseen Allied setback: the sudden collapse of France, which happened before the British or the US could do anything to prevent it. That dragged the war out, ensured the West alone couldn't win it, and vastly increased the body count, but didn't change the end result for Germany.
1. Russia has now had 8 years of experience with import substitution due to gradually increasing US sanctions. They have gotten pretty good at it. You might say that economic sanctions follow the law of diminishing returns. More sanctions at this point don't increase the pain dial much for Russia.
2. The Russian war games for months prior to the invasion meant they were testing all their units and vehicles in simulated combat conditions. If their tires were dry rotted they would have discovered this weeks or months before the invasion.
3. The Russian military has a lot of combat experience in Chenchnya, S. Ossetia, and Syria. Putin's staff knew how to calculate the cost of life to invade Ukraine. They are willing to pay that price.
4. Russian military has had a news blackout on the areas of current operations. While Ukraine and CIA/MI6 have been blaring nonstop internet "news". It will not be surprising to learn that 85% of the news from the Ukrainian side turns out to be false.
5. Russia's primary goal is denazification of Ukraine. Since 2014, Ukraine has outlawed and persecuted opposition parties. Zelensky shut down 7 television stations that criticized him. The persecution has caused about 2 million Ukrainians to emigrate to Russia. Therefore there is no opposition leadership ready to take the reigns. I don't see how "denazification" can be accomplished without occupying Ukraine for one full election cycle. But the Russians must think there is a way to do it, or I doubt they would have committed to this war with that as the stated objective.
The reason there is a hot war going on in Europe at this moment is because one side of a long standing cold war finally felt pressed into a corner and their increasingly strident demands for security guarantees were completely ignored. It also appears to me that the Biden administration hoped to force Russia to intervene in Ukraine, but they did not expect the strategic scope of the intervention.
If you want a war to end, it behooves everyone to listen to what the other side has to say about why they picked up the sword.
Mr. Putin said that defense of the Donbass cities was one of several reasons for this military action. However, the stated objective of the operation itself was "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. The author of this blog is talking about his ability to accurately forecast the result of the war. If one hopes to determine what the outcome will be, a good starting place is to look at what both parties to the conflict want, and what they are willing to give up in order to get what they want.
Russian leaders have been saying for many years that they do not want more territory, but they feel threatened by the toleration of openly nazi ideology in Ukraine's government and military, and they feel threatened by the militarization of Ukraine, either by putting weapons of mass destruction there (nuclear missiles, biolabs or whatever), or by joining NATO, which Russia views as having designs on breaking Russia into three countries. The goal of partitioning Russia into three "manageable" pieces has been openly stated by US policy wonks since Brzezinski in the Reagan administration.
Ukraine has been sold a bill of goods by successive US administrations to create conflict with Russia, with precisely the goal of justifying EU sanctions on Russian gas and oil. That part of the mission has been accomplished. What they did not expect was for Russia to go all the way to Kiev with the objective of regime change.
It is quite obvious that Ukraine has been a US puppet since the overthrow of Yanukovich in 2014. So the reality is that the only thing that could end this war is the USA and Russia sitting down to negotiate. Zelensky doesn't have the power to negotiate. He is not his own boss.
Russia has been nearly silent on what is actually happening in Ukraine since the invasion began two weeks ago. Ukraine and the Western MSM have been spouting nonstop hopium, ranging from the "Ghost of Kiev" to "there are no US biolabs in Ukraine", only to backtrack a few days later, when the Ghost turns out to be a video game, and Victoria Nuland admits to Congress there are Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine and she really really fears they may fall into Russian hands. What is there to be afraid of? If all you were doing is basic medical research, who cares if the Russians get their hands on some tests of antibiotics or whatever. It is quite obvious that Nuland doesn't fear the Russians getting the samples. They fear the Russians getting the documents showing that the Pentagon was paying for illegal bioweapons research in Ukraine, because that would justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine at least to the standards of Colin Powell...
Anyone who thinks Ukraine will be able to defeat Russia are complete ignoramuses. Ukraine lost on the first day, when their air force and air defenses were effectively annihilated. What is happening now is a slow and methodical Russian move to do what they said their operational goal was - demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. I can see how the demilitarization is a done deal. I do not however, believe Russia will be able to achieve their goal of removing strident US-backed nationalists from power in Ukraine unless they are willing to occupy the country for several years. That to me is the only Russian operational objective that is very much in question.
Returning to the question of what the parties are willing to give up to get what they want... I think that Russia has probably bitten off more than they can chew with regard to the goal of "denazification" which, for the sake of Alex N, we could instead call "removal of war hawks from the Ukrainian government".
Therefore, Russia is likely to be willing to give up some things if Ukraine will commit to doing that themselves.
If Zelensky were to offer recognition of Crimea and Donbass, and commitment to neutrality and not joining NATO, Russia will be willing to leave.
Those who imagine that Ukrainians have any hope of defeating the Russian military are completely ignorant of realities on the ground there. NATO is not even willing to declare a no-fly zone, because they know that Russia will treat that as an act of war, and start treating NATO as an active combatant. NATO is not going to come to the rescue. The sooner Ukraine's mayors and whatever is left of their government realizes that the sooner they can start making rational decisions to get themselves out of this mess.
Honestly it's this kind of willful lack of engagement with uncomfortable realities that makes me more certain by the day that others who think like this will take us down a very dangerous (and possibly radioactive) path when it's Taiwan in the crosshairs in perhaps 8-16 years time.
Hanania spoke in his essay just now that a lot of pundits and analysts are engaged in wishful thinking and here you are suggesting that a person who might want to use the actual stated reasons of an invader (no matter how odious) as a basis for discussing what the possible outcomes might be is reduced to calling the person a bot.
If you can't separate emotion from a logical discussion to contemplate things that may be tragic then all you do set yourself up for a shock when things possibly don't end up the way you've been wishing and you've haven't prepared yourself for it by even being able to discuss the possibilities.
Okay, so if that was done with zero emotions then it suggests a lack of an ability to consider and discuss even nominal statements unless one agrees or disagrees with them.
Putin's stated goal was "denazification". One does have to agree that Ukraine is some Fourth Reich to discuss what achieving said goal might mean in practice, because the reality is that in order to claim to achieve said goal (and recall this was the goal he expressed domestically and internationally as his speech was in Russian, not English) then he must clearly attempt to do something. Now what that something is would be what is being debated. Rhinoskerous in actually taking the goal as something Putin believes in (even though Rhinoskerous made no actually judgement one way or the other about whether this conforms to reality because closing down television stations and going after opposition parties is clearly not something that defines Nazism as as distinct from other totalitarian ideologies and indeed as distinct from even simply corrupted democratic politics unfortunately - as it stands Rhinoskerous seems basically to be using Putin's own term as to mean "reshaping the political landscape in Ukraine a way that Putin favours") was then able to articulate that IF Putin is supposedly serious about that particular goal, it can't be achieved without occupying Ukraine for at least one full electoral cycle.
Now this is fairly thought-provoking as a discussion because that is not something one often sees discussed about this conflict at all. I've only seen one essay (in Foreign Affairs) that even bothered to explore what it would mean for Russia to win. Now here Rhinoskerous has pointed out that unless Putin abandon's one of his openly stated goals (no matter whether said goal actually and truly even conformed to reality in the first place in Ukraine) then we would be looking at Ukraine being occupied until at least 2028 (assuming new elections are held in 2022 under whatever regime Putin puts in place in Ukraine and pulls out 1 year after the 2027 elections) or 2030 (assuming that a temporary administration is put in place until the scheduled 2024 elections and then Russia pulls out 1 year after the 2029 elections).
This in turn opens up a raft of possibilities that might need to be discussed. For example, both Ukraine and Russia have banned grain exports (presumably with exceptions for their friends in the West and the non-West respectively) and other countries are now moving to ban the export of many food or food related products. Food prices are set to skyrocket, but the exceptions to the Ukrainian and Russian bans might cushion this price rise to some extent in their respective export markets. If Russia occupies Ukraine until at least 2028, this might well suggest that Ukraine's export ban would then be repurposed by the new authorities to conform to Russia's ban and its exceptions. Which in turn could mean that food prices in the West will REALLY skyrocket.
But if all that you can do is call someone a bot because they decided to examine a claim on its face and think of the consequences therefrom, then you are highly unlikely to even begin to be aware of what the wider effects might be. In effect as Rhinoskerous said, you would be keeping your head in the sand (or perhaps keeping your fingers in your ears).
Putin said the two objectives of the "special operation" are "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine". Putin's forces presently control 30% of Ukrainian territory. Whatever "denazification" means to Putin, they are well down the road to doing it. It's ok, Alex N, you can keep your head in the sand. Nobody is coming for you. But for people who want the war to end, there are only two paths. Either defeat the Russians in war to expel them from Ukraine, or figure out what Putin wants, and make a deal.
You seem to credulously refer to Russia's aim as 'denazification.' The idea that Ukraine is run by Nazis is absurd. Maybe you were merely quoting Putin's aims as he understands them. It wasn't grammatically clear. It is hard to take people who seriously buy the Nazi angle seriously in any case.
The west has been writing about the perplexing open Nazi ideology of Azov for eight years until Mr. Putin decided to invade. Suddenly it has become "propaganda". I agree it is partially propaganda. Both Russia and the West have used Nazism as the ultimate "evil other" in their propaganda since 1939 or so. That being said, the stated objectives of the Ukraine operation are demilitarization and denazification. You can translate that to forcing Ukraine to be a neutral country, and replacing the war hawks in their political structure. That doesn't strike me as "credulous". It's just the reality of understanding how the Russians see it and why they are doing this.
There are people who analyze the situation objectively. Some argue that Putin will not fail. I actually agree with that - I think Putin will likely win the war part.
There are also Putin's bots. Putin runs whole farms of those. Their objective is information warfare.
It is important to be able to tell one from the other. The "raptor" guy that I replied to is a bot. He didn't provide analysis - he put up pre-packaged talking points from the Putin's state TV.
Sometimes it's hard to tell honest analysis from propaganda. Pointing our real issues can benefit one of the sides, it's a natural problem. However, in this case it's easy. This guy isn't sophisticated. Nobody with a brain believes in "denazification". The other points are easy enough to refute, but at least they need to be refuted - the "denazification" part is a dead giveaway of a bot.
Beyond point 5, there was a part of Putin's speech if I recall it correctly, where it seems he rhetorically asked why go for half measures in decommunization and threatened to show what "real decommunization" would be like.
Taken at face value, this would mean no separate Ukraine (nor Belarus for that matter). It would also mean not just occupying Ukraine for one full electoral cycle, but eventually absorbing it. The rough analogy here might be something like Vietnam - North Vietnam militarily conquered South Vietnam by April 1975 and set up a puppet government, but did not absorb South Vietnam until July 1976. Perhaps the intention here is to occupy Ukraine and get pro-Russian politicians into power with initial neutrality, followed by re-orienting Ukraine stepwise towards Russia through things like the CIS, Eurasian Economic Union and then the CSTO (thus abandoning pretenses towards favouring Ukrainian neutrality) and then penultimately the Union State, after which both Belarus and Ukraine then end up joining Russia fully?
The German blitzkrieg of Poland took 35 days. Yet analysts write as if Russia were already, as a matter of fact, bogged down. Is there a reason for this? Even a poor one? Because the implied memory of German blitzkrieg seems to be of two to three days.
Several, but they boil down to the fact that it's no longer 1939. That's almost 83 years.
As a rough comparison, consider that Waterloo (1815) was roughly the same amount of time distant from the outbreak of World War I).
Outside of some really basic military concepts, pointing to a war that happened 80-100 years ago isn't a very good guide. For that matter, WWI wasn't even a good guide to WWII 20 years later.
You mention several specific factors: would you be specific about the differences in military technology that mean the situation is not analogous? Because while military technology has of course changed, and no war is the same as any other war, we need to have some concrete referents if we are going to make genuine, well-grounded predictions. I'm fine with a series of links on military tech differences, not asking for you to write me an article.
Putin miscalculated that Ukraine would have much, much less resistance than Poland did in 1939. He believed that the Ukrainian nation was a fiction- and a strong sense of national identity is essential for maintaining resistance, which is one major reason why ideologically driven fighters in the Middle East are so much more effective than Arab national armies. The Polish resistance fought for Poland. If there were no Ukraine, then there was nothing for which the Ukrainian military could fight. But Putin was wrong: especially since 2014, the Ukrainian national identity has crystallized. But the military disproportion seems analogous between Ukraine and Poland, which gives me reason to think that the timescale will be roughly alike, along with the casualties. Hardly good news for Russia in absolute terms: 20k deaths and 30k wounded is a system shock to modern countries.
As for whether 1939 and 2022 are potentially analogous:
But most military conflicts in the modern world have not operated in terms of an advancing front with occupation of territory. In this way, 1939 is more analogous to the Russo-Ukrainian war than the Iraq War (after the initial invasion). From what I have seen, military technology has not changed such that fronts in an invasion really move faster.
For example, the speed of modern tanks on roads hit about a maximum of 45 mph. The American M3 Stuart, which was introduced in 1941, had a maximum, of 36 mph on the road. That's not all that different.
Short version, and this isn't a rhetorical question: what *is* a good analogy to the Russo-Ukrainian war? And in specific military terms, why does that show that in terms of ultimate ends, the Russian invasion is going to be far less successful than the German invasion of Poland? (which had nearly 50k casualties- 17k dead, 30k wounded).
I don't know that there's a good general analogy, but let me start with some non-exclusive thoughts on the technological differences and what kind of analogs work and what I think do not.
The biggest technological differences between 1939 and now are those of human capital. These are things that don't get listed out in equipment comparisons because they're both obvious and unknown. Take the average football or baseball player in 1939 and compare him to the average 2022 football player. Basically the same game and same rules. But there's no way in hell the average 1939 player is comparable to the average 2022 player. Similarly, how do you compare, say, a pro basketball team in the NBA to an NCAA team or an Adriatic League team in Europe? Looking at the raw numbers of wins or points per game tells nothing about the qualitative differences which are obvious and unstated. But also unknown in the sense that you don't get consistent situations in which these teams are matched up.
Sorry for the digression, but finding analogies to wars seems similar, because you have to compare both across time and (unknown) capability levels that only get revealed once a war starts. Anyway, some specific differences.
1. The biggest technological difference is in the soldiers themselves. The 2022 soldier has orders of magnitude more human capital. The 1939 Polish soldier knew littler of the outside world, maybe couldn't read, maybe had never been in a car and definitely didn't own one. Training standards for common soldiers were quite low. Getting down to brass tacks, the average infantryman today is much more lethal and capable. In 1939 they couldn't operate independently and they didn't have very effective anti-tank and anti-aircraft options.
2. Communications and organizational capability is probably the second biggest difference. Communications and logistics allow much more independence for small group operations. In a way, there are significant diseconomies of scale here. Organizational capability allows small groups to spread out and communicate effectively. On the other hand, the high-level logistics of an armored advance aren't quite so flexible. In plain terms, your tanks still require huge and continuous amounts of fuel. This is hard to hide and easy to attack.
3. There's a lot more knowledge. In 1939, the idea of blitzkrieg itself was a technological advance. Nobody knew how to defend it because it hadn't been tried. Now we've got 80 years of experience dealing with it. As mentioned earlier, the tactics and capabilities of infantry have grown in orders of magnitude in response, whereas the tactics and capabilities of tanks in particular are kind of linear in progress.
So... I don't know if there is a good analogy to the current war. At best we can compare to previous wars, but we have to examine the differences and what they mean. Compared to 1939 Poland, I'd say the biggest similarities and differences are:
1. Russia mainly launched an armored invasion of a weaker neighbor. Unlike Nazi Germany however, the Russian invasion force didn't have even basic numerical superiority (The Nazis threw two well trained Army Groups of approximately 2 million men at approximately 1m disorganized and poorly supplied Poles). The Russians went in with a practical numerical disadvantage.
2. Poland never fully mobilized and its solders were brave but poorly trained and supplied. Ukraine has already been fighting for 7 years, was well prepared, and is receiving lots of outside support. 1939 supply chains and communications meant they were effectively on their own even though Britain and France were theoretically supposed to be supplying them.
3. German blitzkrieg tactics were totally novel in 1939. Nobody in the world had spent much time figuring out how to beat an armored invasion, and to the extent the Polish army was capable of anything, it wasn't this. Ukraine has a lot of modern innovations in communications, weaponry, and tactics that are explicitly designed to fight back against exactly this sort of invasion. One of the similarities, that's being exploited now but couldn't be then, are the particular reliance of armored forces on their supply chain.
4. Modern equipment is much more sophisticated and hard to replace. A WWII tank had no electronics to speak of. Even its gun was basically a line of sight weapon with a telescope and a slide rule. They could be mass produced and brought to bear quickly. Artillery was and still is an exercise in geometry and Newtonian physics. However, counter-fire abilities are much better now. In 1939, and in WWII in general, the Soviet army could mass artillery to obliterate opponents and there wasn't much the Germans could do to destroy artillery because 1) the Soviets gained air superiority, 2) the fronts were very static... very difficult for Nazi spotters to conceal themselves behind the Soviet lines and 3) technical counter-fire capabilities like radar were in their infancy.
You can see how far counter-fire has come by noting that today's artillery is largely self-propelled. They stop, set up, fire, and then have to move because their position can be triangulated quickly. This means it's harder to sustain and concentrate fire. Also, it means the equipment, again, has to be be more sophisticated, and thus fewer in number and harder to replace than its WWII counterparts.
Just like with tanks, the Ukrainians have tactics that have been developed to deal with artillery that didn't exist in WWII. They have radar that can instantly show where the artillery is. They Russians, for several reasons, can't completely cordon off safe areas around their positions because they're largely the ones advancing into enemy territory. The Ukrainians have their own artillery, which, although much less numerous, can be employed more selectively to take out the Russians when they reveal themselves.
Thank you for your detailed answer. As you point out in the beginning- because of how unique each war is, finding good analogies is very difficult. So I think the biggest challenge for anyone making predictions is to identify what information is most relevant in the grand scheme. I suspect that Russia is going to win relatively speedily (i.e. 1-2 months), but at a far higher cost than predicted. But I have a very low degree of certainty because of the challenges involved.
Have you found any texts in particular helpful in learning military strategy and doctrine?
If you want one single book, I’d say go get a copy of “How to Make War” by James F. Dunnigan. It’s hefty and hasn’t been updated in a few years but very thorough in detail about the mechanics of how countries fight.
One major missing element from the analysis is China. China manufactures just about everything. And Russia not only has good relations with China, they share a border. Yes, the sanctions on Russia effectively cut off goods from Europe, North America, S. Korea, and Japan. However, the rest of the world hasn't jumped on board. India, China, and Iran are not playing the sanctions game. So, Russia has nearby massive manufacturers that can supply most things they need, or launder supplies of anything they cannot get. For this reason I think that the people arguing that Russia will collapse from the sanctions are an echo chamber of hopes and dreams that are not rooted in reality. Russia is not going to go out and commit suicide because AirBNB and MacDonalds pulled out of Moscow.
90 days later, it appears the West is far more dependent on Russian gas, oil, and titanium than Russia ever was on the West. Name one company that pulled out of Russia that actually made a dent in the Russian economy, please.
My view is that the end result in Ukraine will likely be a reduced western Ukraine with concessions to Putin, or a completely annexed Ukraine with no concessions. For the world the eventual borders of the region will not be what has the greatest impact, but rather the geopolitical shifts that occur as a result of the economic/sanctions war to follow. Russia and Ukraine are integral to global food/energy security, and I believe they can play this card to maximal effect, reshaping alliances and influence, and further destabilizing the fragile EU.
The idea the EU is fragile is overdone, where is the evidence for it? It is stronger now than a decade ago and more integrated - and nothing unites like a common foe.
I won’t argue with your assessment as it’s better than anything I could produce, however I think victory, as you define it, could well look like a defeat from many other angles to Russia (e.g. shattered domestic economy, chronic brain drain, rearmed neighbours, subservient to China and much more limited future geopolitical influence).
The Syrian government made retaking the country its only aim and did anything to deliver it, I think many western countries observers cannot believe Russia is equally one dimensional, and that Russia would actually consider this a victory. Maybe that’s where they go wrong.
Zelensky already said explicitly that he has given up joining NATO so I guess it is out of the question. It is possible he will agree to recognize the annexation of Crimea. In the Israeli newspapers it seems that PM Bennet who talked to both sides thinks it is a reasonable compromise. But it will be very flattering to Russia to define this result as a Russian victory. Their army was exposed as extremely incompetent and this war is a huge embarrassment for them.
You have only seen propaganda coming from one side. If Russia fought the way Americans fight, they would have destroyed the cities with artillery and leave them a smoking ruin. Instead, what you are seeing is like a python. They surround the cities, and then open corridors for civilians to leave and for the fighters to surrender. Then they increase the pressure. Then allow corridor again. Using this method in Syria they successfully demilitarized some cities without destroying them. Despite all the screaming coming from Ukrainian sources, Russia does not want to cause undue harm to Ukrainian civilians. That is why the war appears to be going slow to you. Also, it took the Germans longer to occupy Ukraine in WWII than it has taken Russia to take the same amount of territory. So, I'm not sure what your baseline is for saying that the Russian army was incompetent.
That is precisely what they did with Minsk I and II. It was Russia that initiated the ceasefire negotiations in both cases when Ukraine was desperate. But in both cases, the Ukrainians then refused to implement the agreements. I'm not sure Russia will fall for it a third time, but you never know.
I'm perplexed by your "victory conditions" because they don't seem to be related to what either side considers its victory conditions.
The Ex Ante state of affairs was Russian control over the Eastern Regions and Crimea. If that's all they leave with, that's a clear loss. The converse is true for Ukraine. In practice, it's not much of a loss to give up something you have no control over in the first place.
If we're more objective about this:
1. An implicit victory condition is always that the regime survives and continues to hold power. If, within, I dunno, 6 months to a year, of whatever settlement occurs, there's an overthrow or major civil war, then that side has lost.
2. The proximate cause of the conflict, going back 8 years, has been trade relations and economic power and not military defense. A Ukraine that remains free to economically join the West has won. A Russia powerless to stop this has lost.
3. Territory matters primarily to the extent of economic power. If Ukraine becomes landlocked (by losing Odessa as well as the coast of the Sea of Azov, it's significantly weakened and much more dependent on Russia. I don't know how this fits into the victory conditions. I think a Russia that gets Odessa and leaves Ukraine weak and landlocked, even if free to join the EU has probably won.
I don't think your view is that far off from the mainstream view, you just have a different definition of what a victor is. A reversion to something resembling the status quo ante would be seen as a Ukrainian victory, because most people (correctly IMO) see Russia's aims as being 'maximalist.' If you invade a country to take it over, then end up not taking it over and leaving, it's not a really a draw, it's a loss. If Russia gets NATO and the Ukraine to commit to Ukrainian neutrality, but fails to depose and replace the government or gain new territory, I'd call that a draw.
On the cost of the war to Russia though, the intensity of the war is such that in a few months it may already be the deadliest war Russia has fought since WW2, worse even that the Russo-Afghan War (which Russia ultimately couldn't stomach). The US couldn't handle 5k soldiers dying in Iraq in 8 years, and Russia has already lost around that many in 2 weeks. I expect in the next few months Putin will relent and make a deal more or less restoring the pre-war status quo, maybe with Ukraine recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk and agreeing not to join NATO for the time being (which Zelensky already seems open to).
Only person I’ve seen who has always thought Putin would go maximalist was Anatoly. I think world would be pretty surprised if there was any annexation beyond Crimea and Donbas, I think conventional wisdom now is Putin wanted to install a puppet in Kiev but now will settle for a no-NATO pledge or something possibly.
I think Russia will be willing to take more casualties and if not the world seems full of poor Middle Easterners and Africans willing to fight.
> I think Russia will be willing to take more casualties and if not the world seems full of poor Middle Easterners and Africans willing to fight.
You should update your assumptions. The starting point seemed to "Russia can obviously crush Ukraine based on its superior manpower and industrial capability. And the Russian leadership has no obstacles in doing so".
But recruiting mercenaries from Syria and the Central African Republic completely puts the lie to this belief.
Just take the L and learn from it instead of digging in to the ridiculous notion that Russia can throw limitless manpower at it by tapping into the military might of the Central African Republic.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate where you're coming from on most things, and I appreciate your willingness to make predictions, but you need to update your belief here instead of hand waiving away the obvious.
Ok, to clarify I mean "either annexation or installing a puppet" was the original aim. Settling for acknowledgement of Crimea and Donbas I think would be a disappointment for Russia.
There were two wars between Finland and Soviet Union. Finland lost some of its territory. These wars were considered wins by Finnish side. And considered losses/draws by Soviet/Russian side.
Wars against Finland, but also 1st Chechen War were examples where Soviets/Russians were ready to give up if losses started to mount.
I'm really befuddled how nobody seems to notice the pretty remarkably successful high-tech component of the Russian assault. The Kalibrs, the Iskanders, the AA shooting down Ukrainian tactical ballistic missiles, the new choppers....
Sir, you do not account for China entering the war should NATO intervene or if the Russian regime is threatened. Admittedly, this takes us far afield, but interesting to contemplate: historians allege that one of the reasons Louis XIV began the Nine Years' War was because the Ottoman Empire was under duress from the Hapsburg Emperor. Surely, Louis also calculated that his war would be easier because the Emperor's forces and attention would be divided, but it is thought he wished in part to prevent the collapse of his allies the Ottomans, so that the Emperor would always have another flank to contend with. Now this unholy alliance between France and the Ottomans is nowhere near as tight and binding as the alliance between China and Russia. And surely, the Chinese are well aware that if the West is able to win fully here, that is install another Western puppet in Russia, China would be encircled and vulnerable to economic and diplomatic strangulation. So, to ease pressure on Russia, if indeed Russia was under duress, wouldn't and shouldn't the Chinese make a play for Taiwan and maybe even South Korea? From a grand strategy perspective, it seems absolutely necessary for China to ensure that regime change does not happen in Russia. How does your calculus change then? What would happen to the US economy if it had to sanction China? Would the US honor its alliances? Could it?
I would put the probability of this escalating to war with NATO at about 60%. But I'm not sure why you think Ukraine would win if NATO is pulled into the war. Most American analysis and simulations of a war between NATO and Russia in Europe find it highly probable that NATO would be defeated.
The probability of NATO intervening is small, I don't know how you get 60%. The US has been steadfast about not getting involved, and only Russia doing something outlandish like using nukes would change the calculus of that.
Looking at your comment 90 days later... NATO is clearly heavily involved in shipping weapons to Ukraine. Russia recognizes this and may do something about it. That is why I rank it as 60% then, and I still rank it as 60% probability of open war between Russia and NATO by the end of 2022.
Wow: I would not even try to forecast a WAR outcome but good for you for putting together that assessment. Keeping my response very brief as I am being inundated by various sundry requests for money, petitions and opinions: all of which the world can get along without: I was married (my second husband RIP to an Air Force Major) who was Aide to Camp to a Brig General: his job along with the General's was for Strategic Air Defense: and his job was WAR PLANNER. All those "so called War games" and exercises. My RIP father-in-law was Vice Admiral MIT aeronautical engineer/ Naval Academy anti-submarine warfare, and he was the FLAG SHIP officer in the Pacific. I remember when he came back from a long deployment to the Philippines (both of those guys had been to the Philippines where the US used to have a huge base (look it up)) after an unusually difficult tour: he had lost fifty pounds and was convinced we would be at war any day.. and these men were the BEST OF THE BEST.. literally: That is all I can say on that: I did see the revelation about the so-called bioweapons labs in Ukraine which do exist. The issue with trying to forecast as civilian without having gone to War College (yes that is what it is called and it is graduate level work divided into areas of expertise is the both the PROPAGANDA and LACK OF KNOWLEDGE and expertise. I cannot remember if I mentioned before the manic secrecy which in some cases is needed by our Govt and also the other GOVT who are involved in this WAR. What is being presented as the truth is the tip of the ICEBURG. Job well done. as we used to say in the Navy. :) gotta go
Historically Russia was waged seemingly inept wars, typically botched at the outset (1914, 1941, First Chechen War). They either eventually win by bulldozing their opponent, after mobilizing their huge human and material resources (1945, Second Chechen War), or give up when the country is in an actual (1905, 1917) or nascent (1856) revolt. Russia has fought against much more powerful enemies and alliances for much longer than a few weeks on many occasions. The idea that Putin will get bored or decide it was all a mistake and go home, or give up because of economic sanctions, is not especially convincing, though, as you say, who knows? Still, the smart bet would be that Russia, having jumped into this thing, will wage it to a favorable conclusion, even at what foreigners would consider to be stupid and excessive cost. That's their way.
I have a general sense, and I could be wrong, that technology no longer favors the historically successful Russian model of warfare.
Yes, they bulldozed the Chechens, but the Chechens were orders of magnitude weaker and poorly supported than the Ukrainians seem to be. Russian forces attacking Ukraine do not seem to be orders of magnitude stronger than the forces that won in Chechnya, and the Russian ability to replace losses seems to be more in doubt.
Sources generally suggest the Russian army launched the Chechen invasion with approximately 80k troops against the Chechen resistance of 20-30k. This puts it roughly in line with general military maxim than an attacker needs at least a 3-1 numerical advantage over a defender.
The Ukrainian invasion seems to have been of about 200k Russian forces against the Ukrainian armed forces which have approximately 240k active personnel. Quality matters, but it's worth considering that the Russians plainly don't have the sort of numerical advantage they've historically needed to be successful.
Russia has committed only 10% of their available military forces to the invasion of Ukraine. They have plenty of reserves to throw in if they deem it necessary.
My understanding is that the 10% figure has noncombat personnel in the denominator, or assumes a massive mobilization effort.
It isn’t clear to me where Russia could draw the kind of manpower needed to overwhelm a mobilizing and motivated enemy. If anything, Ukraine is presumably training and arming a growing share of its population, and it isn’t out of the question that they will outnumber Russia’s extant forces sooner or later.
Unless Russia mobilizes a growing share of its youth for the war effort, or achieves a quick breakthrough with the forces at hand, can they really achieve the kind of numerical superiority you seem to imply? Can a country reeling from demographic decline throw waves of only sons into a grinding war of aggression?
Russia has more than three times as many active duty personnel. Two million Russian reservists could be called up. Russia has four times the population and ten times the GDP of Ukraine. It has about five times as many tanks and armored vehicles. In short, it is a mismatch. Of course no one knows how this will end. But in a war of attrition, Ukraine is clearly disfavored. The idea that Russia is about fall apart or give up in Ukraine, where the leadership clearly considers this war a matter of national survival, is wishful thinking and not well founded. Admiration for the Ukrainians and disgust with Putin and Russia is not putting people in an analytic mindset. And the idea that the Ukrainian people should become guerrillas if they lose, and fight against a ruthless occupier, dragging out the suffering and leading to the comprehensive devastation their country, is far from an obvious moral or practical choice. Accepting defeat when it happens and ending the bloodshed is sometimes the wiser course, as hard as it is. Ukraine's only hope for survival in open conflict with Russia would have been to have firmly committed alliance partners before hostilities broke out. As it is, powerful countries, especially the USA, which have nuclear weapons, might have been able to protect Ukraine or deter attack. But Ukraine did not have firm commitments in advance, and so Ukraine, tragically for the Ukrainians, is mostly on its own in this fight. The USA and NATO are unlikely to risk a nuclear war with Putin's Russia over Ukraine, despite strong public sentiment for Ukraine and admiration for their courage and fighting skill. Like the Finns in 1940, their pluck and the justice of their cause will not be enough, barring some miracle. Finding a negotiated solution as soon as possible would be the prudent course, though it would be unsatisfying to people safely in foreign countries putting blue and yellow flags on their social media pages. This entire episode is terrible.
Contrarianism also puts people out of an analytical mindset. People can be desperate to scold the "emotional" wishful thinking of the majority and equally throw out common sense and historical example.
Counting the strength of military forces is equally subject to overestimating them. There's the numbers on paper, and then there's the reality. This isn't uniquely true about Russia, it's true of almost all armed forces. The numbers on paper sound terrifying. Example after example shows why this is not the case.
The war up to this part allows some educated inferences about the Russian's belief in their own army and willingness to engage in total warfare. It's simply not true that we "know nothing"
1. They, in fact, didn't call up any reservists, even though basic military doctrine, and especially Russian basic military doctrine would call for this.
2. Instead, they attacked with much less than the necessary force that conventional doctrine called for.
3. It's not literally true that there's "no information" or "discussion" in Russian political discourse. The admission that conscripts were sent into combat against Russian law was clearly not popular and even the authoritarian regime had to respond to this reality.
4. Modern warfare moves more quickly. It took years to build up, train and deploy the Russian army to the point that they're underwhelming during the invasion. Training up a bunch of conscripts and putting them in 40 year old tanks is, at best, going to take a year to put them in position to reach whatever combat effectiveness they can reach. To date I haven't read any indication that the Russians are engaged in this kind of general call up. At this point, by the time the reserves were ready, the initial force will have long-since been spent.
Taken together, these facts provide a strong indication that, whether they have the theoretical capability to do so or not, the Russian regime doesn't have the appetite to reenact the Battle of Stalingrad. If we want to talk about wishful thinking, the obvious wishful thinking here is that the Russians vastly overestimated the capabilities of their standing army and underestimated the willingness and ability of the Ukrainians to fight back.
That doesn't mean that we should completely dismiss the possibility that Russia could mount a general call up and grind down the Ukrainians, but the evidence so far has pointed strongly against it. It would be politically difficult (even for a dictatorship) and further, there are serious doubts as to the effectiveness of the force they'd be able to bring to bear.
The Russians pretty clearly expected to win quickly, and failed. Do they give up? Or do they commit the resources they have not committed yet? Launching a full scale interstate war in Europe for the first time since 1945 is a big step. The Russian regime perceives this as a life or death matter. Not seeing any evidence that they will back down. Most likely there will be surprises ahead, there usually are. Still, sentiment aside, Ukraine is outmatched, unless other countries make a major commitment, or the regime collapses. Either could happen, though the risk of nuclear war suggests that other countries will not engage in open combat.
The likely case is that Russia can neither escalate dramatically nor give up.
It's a classic case of the regime dramatically miscalculating. They didn't actually expect this to become a matter of life and death for the regime. They expected a win in line with Chechnya, Georgia, Dagestan, Syria, etc. The dramatic failure has made it a matter of life and death for the regime, and either course of action poses very real but different existential threats.
There is evidence that they're not escalating, if not fully backing out.
1. The apparent lack of widespread mobilization.
2. The general softening of peace terms they're offering.
Well honestly in that case they can threathen the use of nukes and then use a very small warhead (2 kTon maybe) to show they are serious.
Russia can not loose this. If they do Russia will loose much standing in the non-west and Russian elite consensus is that this is an existential matter and Russia reserves the right tpo use nuclear weapons if existential threats to Russia arises.
Are the US gonna release their ICBMs/SLBMs for a non-NATO member - however much neurotic hate that exists against Russia among the ethnoreligious group that make up the bulk of neocons and the new post-68 american elite - because of historical revisionist persecution delusions and the mythical Pale of settlement-period (When this group still enjoyed much more rights than ordinary Russians who were only feudal subjects back then) - and 30 minutes later we have all cities with 250k+ population globally destroyed, including Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities?
I don't think so, but on the other hand this group is infamously vengeful (Almost every holiday they celebrate is a genocide of their former enemies) so I guess we will see. China will of course have a very large say in this, but they also have a very large interest in the Russians not loosing this war.
I understand there is a daunting mismatch, and you are right to remind us of it.
My point, which could have been clearer, was alluding to the political challenge of sending an army of reservists and conscripts into the maws of a war of aggression. Presumably, the political will to fight would be compromised long before Russia is bled dry. I understand that Ukraine is a geopolitically important prize for Russia, but I am not convinced that the Russian society is willing to put itself through total war to achieve maximalist offensive objectives
I’m not convinced of anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Objective criteria suggest that the Russians are going to win this thing as long as they stay in the fight. But we don’t know what’s going to happen. Russian society crumbled into revolution in 1905 and in 1917, but in both cases it was after repeated, shattering and humiliating defeats at the hands of peer competitors. So far they haven’t suffered anything on that scale. Unless we were all incinerated in a nuclear exchange, we will find out how this goes. It’s terribly sad that it is happening at all.
There is a meme that circulates periodically about how ppl pivot from being an "expert" on X to being an expert on Y (virology to Russia or something). https://ifunny.co/tags/slowik is a good example.
It has always struck me as silly. It's not expertise - it's critical reasoning, which allows for an intelligent person to study and have an opinion about a variety of topics. We all know that "expertise" is quite often useless or worse.
I think you make a really good and humble point here - you can read and learn - and then form an opinion, while still acknowledging that it may not be a perfect forecast. You don't have to be the tire guy. You can read what the tire guy says and then incorporate it into your mental model.
I would challenge this: "It's not expertise - it's critical reasoning... We all know that "expertise" is quite often useless".
Critical reasoning - being garbage in/garbage out kind of deal - in a wide open problem with incomplete information often misfires. Correct expertise on the other hand should work just fine.
How would you grade the expertise on display these past two years regarding SARS-2? Does your answer refute or affirm your premise?
You can even break down your answers as between the government (actions taken) response, and the public health (advice given) response, et al., for a more granular grading.
To answer your question, I would have to first separate policies and advise based on "expertise" and those based on "critical thinking". I don't have the visibility to do that.
The one example I know of clear "critical thinking" was the infamous model that predicted much more damage than occurred, perhaps leading to a lot of overreaction. But even there I cannot separate one from the other.
Its been fascinating to watch this war play out as an outsider in the US. The US media is almost completely ignoring the astroturfed 2014 "revolution" and the US role in it, while simultaneously also ignoring the far-right Neo-Nazis fighting for Ukraine.
It's very odd, seems like we're back in the post 9/11 era where big chunks of the mainstream actually want war and will go to any lengths to get it. I agree with your predictions Richard, but one wild card is some kind of false flag operation to draw the West into a direct war, could be this war's equivalent of "WMD's in Iraq"...
There's a heavy bias from inside a war towards making it seem closer than it really is. Political contests are much the same: check out the tone of fundraising emails even for incumbent politicians in a non-competitive race. This is partly because various forces are trying to convince you it's close, and partly because humans seem to have a psychological tendency to want to believe it's close. Can't let up now!
When you're sitting inside WW2 you think, "Oh wow, looks like the Third Reich might grow so powerful as to even invade the US and reign until the ending of the world." Afterwards: "Well duh, idiots, Germany never stood a chance, they were lucky they even managed to make a real war out of it, the collapse of France was a fluke."
I was only a kid during Desert Storm but I'll never forget being frightened after a news report convinced me that Saddam might start raining SCUD missiles upon the continental US, until my father assured me that was nonsense.
So my first order approximation is to say large conventional wars almost always eventually go to the side the conventional wisdom would have expected to win before the war started, provided it understood the alliance structure correctly. You will almost certainly have more doubt about the outcome from inside the war than before it started, but a majority of that doubt is coming from the effect I'm describing. Not to say setbacks aren't real and might be costly for the winner and even require settling for reduced war aims, but from inside the war everyone around you is going to be biased towards overestimating their significance to the outcome.
"Afterwards: "Well duh, idiots, Germany never stood a chance"
Germany was just stopped in the USSR. That was the breaking point. Suppose that didn't happen - what would the alternative history look like?
"the collapse of France was a fluke" - as was the collapse of the rest of Europe except UK?
I would strongly challenge your views on WWII.
That's my somewhat jocular way of portraying the conventional wisdom and channeling a bit of Tooze and Overy, so take it up with them. But note that practically no one expected the collapse of France to happen as it did, either inside or outside the German leadership.
The collapse of France was not like the conquest of Poland, which everyone predicted. All Germany's other conquests were weaker countries still, and picked off one by one, so even more predictable.
In the end, the war turned out the way everyone in 1939 thought it probably would, with Germany buried beneath the sheer resources of its enemies, except for one major unforeseen Allied setback: the sudden collapse of France, which happened before the British or the US could do anything to prevent it. That dragged the war out, ensured the West alone couldn't win it, and vastly increased the body count, but didn't change the end result for Germany.
Points in response:
1. Russia has now had 8 years of experience with import substitution due to gradually increasing US sanctions. They have gotten pretty good at it. You might say that economic sanctions follow the law of diminishing returns. More sanctions at this point don't increase the pain dial much for Russia.
2. The Russian war games for months prior to the invasion meant they were testing all their units and vehicles in simulated combat conditions. If their tires were dry rotted they would have discovered this weeks or months before the invasion.
3. The Russian military has a lot of combat experience in Chenchnya, S. Ossetia, and Syria. Putin's staff knew how to calculate the cost of life to invade Ukraine. They are willing to pay that price.
4. Russian military has had a news blackout on the areas of current operations. While Ukraine and CIA/MI6 have been blaring nonstop internet "news". It will not be surprising to learn that 85% of the news from the Ukrainian side turns out to be false.
5. Russia's primary goal is denazification of Ukraine. Since 2014, Ukraine has outlawed and persecuted opposition parties. Zelensky shut down 7 television stations that criticized him. The persecution has caused about 2 million Ukrainians to emigrate to Russia. Therefore there is no opposition leadership ready to take the reigns. I don't see how "denazification" can be accomplished without occupying Ukraine for one full election cycle. But the Russians must think there is a way to do it, or I doubt they would have committed to this war with that as the stated objective.
amazing to see a Putin's bot on this forum.
My commentary above did not take a side. It was merely a cold and rational assessment of the facts. If that makes me a Putin bot, then so be it.
Rhinoskerous, you guys have always been more active than effective. Copy-pasting Putin's talking points leaves no room for doubt about your nature.
Copy and pasted from where exactly?
The reason there is a hot war going on in Europe at this moment is because one side of a long standing cold war finally felt pressed into a corner and their increasingly strident demands for security guarantees were completely ignored. It also appears to me that the Biden administration hoped to force Russia to intervene in Ukraine, but they did not expect the strategic scope of the intervention.
If you want a war to end, it behooves everyone to listen to what the other side has to say about why they picked up the sword.
Mr. Putin said that defense of the Donbass cities was one of several reasons for this military action. However, the stated objective of the operation itself was "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. The author of this blog is talking about his ability to accurately forecast the result of the war. If one hopes to determine what the outcome will be, a good starting place is to look at what both parties to the conflict want, and what they are willing to give up in order to get what they want.
Russian leaders have been saying for many years that they do not want more territory, but they feel threatened by the toleration of openly nazi ideology in Ukraine's government and military, and they feel threatened by the militarization of Ukraine, either by putting weapons of mass destruction there (nuclear missiles, biolabs or whatever), or by joining NATO, which Russia views as having designs on breaking Russia into three countries. The goal of partitioning Russia into three "manageable" pieces has been openly stated by US policy wonks since Brzezinski in the Reagan administration.
Ukraine has been sold a bill of goods by successive US administrations to create conflict with Russia, with precisely the goal of justifying EU sanctions on Russian gas and oil. That part of the mission has been accomplished. What they did not expect was for Russia to go all the way to Kiev with the objective of regime change.
It is quite obvious that Ukraine has been a US puppet since the overthrow of Yanukovich in 2014. So the reality is that the only thing that could end this war is the USA and Russia sitting down to negotiate. Zelensky doesn't have the power to negotiate. He is not his own boss.
Russia has been nearly silent on what is actually happening in Ukraine since the invasion began two weeks ago. Ukraine and the Western MSM have been spouting nonstop hopium, ranging from the "Ghost of Kiev" to "there are no US biolabs in Ukraine", only to backtrack a few days later, when the Ghost turns out to be a video game, and Victoria Nuland admits to Congress there are Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine and she really really fears they may fall into Russian hands. What is there to be afraid of? If all you were doing is basic medical research, who cares if the Russians get their hands on some tests of antibiotics or whatever. It is quite obvious that Nuland doesn't fear the Russians getting the samples. They fear the Russians getting the documents showing that the Pentagon was paying for illegal bioweapons research in Ukraine, because that would justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine at least to the standards of Colin Powell...
Anyone who thinks Ukraine will be able to defeat Russia are complete ignoramuses. Ukraine lost on the first day, when their air force and air defenses were effectively annihilated. What is happening now is a slow and methodical Russian move to do what they said their operational goal was - demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. I can see how the demilitarization is a done deal. I do not however, believe Russia will be able to achieve their goal of removing strident US-backed nationalists from power in Ukraine unless they are willing to occupy the country for several years. That to me is the only Russian operational objective that is very much in question.
Returning to the question of what the parties are willing to give up to get what they want... I think that Russia has probably bitten off more than they can chew with regard to the goal of "denazification" which, for the sake of Alex N, we could instead call "removal of war hawks from the Ukrainian government".
Therefore, Russia is likely to be willing to give up some things if Ukraine will commit to doing that themselves.
If Zelensky were to offer recognition of Crimea and Donbass, and commitment to neutrality and not joining NATO, Russia will be willing to leave.
Those who imagine that Ukrainians have any hope of defeating the Russian military are completely ignorant of realities on the ground there. NATO is not even willing to declare a no-fly zone, because they know that Russia will treat that as an act of war, and start treating NATO as an active combatant. NATO is not going to come to the rescue. The sooner Ukraine's mayors and whatever is left of their government realizes that the sooner they can start making rational decisions to get themselves out of this mess.
Honestly it's this kind of willful lack of engagement with uncomfortable realities that makes me more certain by the day that others who think like this will take us down a very dangerous (and possibly radioactive) path when it's Taiwan in the crosshairs in perhaps 8-16 years time.
Hanania spoke in his essay just now that a lot of pundits and analysts are engaged in wishful thinking and here you are suggesting that a person who might want to use the actual stated reasons of an invader (no matter how odious) as a basis for discussing what the possible outcomes might be is reduced to calling the person a bot.
If you can't separate emotion from a logical discussion to contemplate things that may be tragic then all you do set yourself up for a shock when things possibly don't end up the way you've been wishing and you've haven't prepared yourself for it by even being able to discuss the possibilities.
with absolutely zero emotions, anyone who pushes "denazification" as Putin's objective is a bot.
In a fog, it is doubly important to be able to recognize disinformation campaign. Especially when it is this obvious.
Okay, so if that was done with zero emotions then it suggests a lack of an ability to consider and discuss even nominal statements unless one agrees or disagrees with them.
Putin's stated goal was "denazification". One does have to agree that Ukraine is some Fourth Reich to discuss what achieving said goal might mean in practice, because the reality is that in order to claim to achieve said goal (and recall this was the goal he expressed domestically and internationally as his speech was in Russian, not English) then he must clearly attempt to do something. Now what that something is would be what is being debated. Rhinoskerous in actually taking the goal as something Putin believes in (even though Rhinoskerous made no actually judgement one way or the other about whether this conforms to reality because closing down television stations and going after opposition parties is clearly not something that defines Nazism as as distinct from other totalitarian ideologies and indeed as distinct from even simply corrupted democratic politics unfortunately - as it stands Rhinoskerous seems basically to be using Putin's own term as to mean "reshaping the political landscape in Ukraine a way that Putin favours") was then able to articulate that IF Putin is supposedly serious about that particular goal, it can't be achieved without occupying Ukraine for at least one full electoral cycle.
Now this is fairly thought-provoking as a discussion because that is not something one often sees discussed about this conflict at all. I've only seen one essay (in Foreign Affairs) that even bothered to explore what it would mean for Russia to win. Now here Rhinoskerous has pointed out that unless Putin abandon's one of his openly stated goals (no matter whether said goal actually and truly even conformed to reality in the first place in Ukraine) then we would be looking at Ukraine being occupied until at least 2028 (assuming new elections are held in 2022 under whatever regime Putin puts in place in Ukraine and pulls out 1 year after the 2027 elections) or 2030 (assuming that a temporary administration is put in place until the scheduled 2024 elections and then Russia pulls out 1 year after the 2029 elections).
This in turn opens up a raft of possibilities that might need to be discussed. For example, both Ukraine and Russia have banned grain exports (presumably with exceptions for their friends in the West and the non-West respectively) and other countries are now moving to ban the export of many food or food related products. Food prices are set to skyrocket, but the exceptions to the Ukrainian and Russian bans might cushion this price rise to some extent in their respective export markets. If Russia occupies Ukraine until at least 2028, this might well suggest that Ukraine's export ban would then be repurposed by the new authorities to conform to Russia's ban and its exceptions. Which in turn could mean that food prices in the West will REALLY skyrocket.
But if all that you can do is call someone a bot because they decided to examine a claim on its face and think of the consequences therefrom, then you are highly unlikely to even begin to be aware of what the wider effects might be. In effect as Rhinoskerous said, you would be keeping your head in the sand (or perhaps keeping your fingers in your ears).
Putin said the two objectives of the "special operation" are "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine". Putin's forces presently control 30% of Ukrainian territory. Whatever "denazification" means to Putin, they are well down the road to doing it. It's ok, Alex N, you can keep your head in the sand. Nobody is coming for you. But for people who want the war to end, there are only two paths. Either defeat the Russians in war to expel them from Ukraine, or figure out what Putin wants, and make a deal.
You seem to credulously refer to Russia's aim as 'denazification.' The idea that Ukraine is run by Nazis is absurd. Maybe you were merely quoting Putin's aims as he understands them. It wasn't grammatically clear. It is hard to take people who seriously buy the Nazi angle seriously in any case.
The west has been writing about the perplexing open Nazi ideology of Azov for eight years until Mr. Putin decided to invade. Suddenly it has become "propaganda". I agree it is partially propaganda. Both Russia and the West have used Nazism as the ultimate "evil other" in their propaganda since 1939 or so. That being said, the stated objectives of the Ukraine operation are demilitarization and denazification. You can translate that to forcing Ukraine to be a neutral country, and replacing the war hawks in their political structure. That doesn't strike me as "credulous". It's just the reality of understanding how the Russians see it and why they are doing this.
What a silly comment, when anyone tries to analyze this objectively and does not state that Putin will fail, they are a Russian "bot" or "puppet".
There are people who analyze the situation objectively. Some argue that Putin will not fail. I actually agree with that - I think Putin will likely win the war part.
There are also Putin's bots. Putin runs whole farms of those. Their objective is information warfare.
It is important to be able to tell one from the other. The "raptor" guy that I replied to is a bot. He didn't provide analysis - he put up pre-packaged talking points from the Putin's state TV.
Sometimes it's hard to tell honest analysis from propaganda. Pointing our real issues can benefit one of the sides, it's a natural problem. However, in this case it's easy. This guy isn't sophisticated. Nobody with a brain believes in "denazification". The other points are easy enough to refute, but at least they need to be refuted - the "denazification" part is a dead giveaway of a bot.
Re 5: It's reported that 3 TV stations were shut down[1]. What are the other 4?
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/ukraines-president-bans-pro-russian-networks-risking-support
Beyond point 5, there was a part of Putin's speech if I recall it correctly, where it seems he rhetorically asked why go for half measures in decommunization and threatened to show what "real decommunization" would be like.
Taken at face value, this would mean no separate Ukraine (nor Belarus for that matter). It would also mean not just occupying Ukraine for one full electoral cycle, but eventually absorbing it. The rough analogy here might be something like Vietnam - North Vietnam militarily conquered South Vietnam by April 1975 and set up a puppet government, but did not absorb South Vietnam until July 1976. Perhaps the intention here is to occupy Ukraine and get pro-Russian politicians into power with initial neutrality, followed by re-orienting Ukraine stepwise towards Russia through things like the CIS, Eurasian Economic Union and then the CSTO (thus abandoning pretenses towards favouring Ukrainian neutrality) and then penultimately the Union State, after which both Belarus and Ukraine then end up joining Russia fully?
The German blitzkrieg of Poland took 35 days. Yet analysts write as if Russia were already, as a matter of fact, bogged down. Is there a reason for this? Even a poor one? Because the implied memory of German blitzkrieg seems to be of two to three days.
Several, but they boil down to the fact that it's no longer 1939. That's almost 83 years.
As a rough comparison, consider that Waterloo (1815) was roughly the same amount of time distant from the outbreak of World War I).
Outside of some really basic military concepts, pointing to a war that happened 80-100 years ago isn't a very good guide. For that matter, WWI wasn't even a good guide to WWII 20 years later.
You mention several specific factors: would you be specific about the differences in military technology that mean the situation is not analogous? Because while military technology has of course changed, and no war is the same as any other war, we need to have some concrete referents if we are going to make genuine, well-grounded predictions. I'm fine with a series of links on military tech differences, not asking for you to write me an article.
Putin miscalculated that Ukraine would have much, much less resistance than Poland did in 1939. He believed that the Ukrainian nation was a fiction- and a strong sense of national identity is essential for maintaining resistance, which is one major reason why ideologically driven fighters in the Middle East are so much more effective than Arab national armies. The Polish resistance fought for Poland. If there were no Ukraine, then there was nothing for which the Ukrainian military could fight. But Putin was wrong: especially since 2014, the Ukrainian national identity has crystallized. But the military disproportion seems analogous between Ukraine and Poland, which gives me reason to think that the timescale will be roughly alike, along with the casualties. Hardly good news for Russia in absolute terms: 20k deaths and 30k wounded is a system shock to modern countries.
As for whether 1939 and 2022 are potentially analogous:
But most military conflicts in the modern world have not operated in terms of an advancing front with occupation of territory. In this way, 1939 is more analogous to the Russo-Ukrainian war than the Iraq War (after the initial invasion). From what I have seen, military technology has not changed such that fronts in an invasion really move faster.
For example, the speed of modern tanks on roads hit about a maximum of 45 mph. The American M3 Stuart, which was introduced in 1941, had a maximum, of 36 mph on the road. That's not all that different.
Short version, and this isn't a rhetorical question: what *is* a good analogy to the Russo-Ukrainian war? And in specific military terms, why does that show that in terms of ultimate ends, the Russian invasion is going to be far less successful than the German invasion of Poland? (which had nearly 50k casualties- 17k dead, 30k wounded).
I don't know that there's a good general analogy, but let me start with some non-exclusive thoughts on the technological differences and what kind of analogs work and what I think do not.
The biggest technological differences between 1939 and now are those of human capital. These are things that don't get listed out in equipment comparisons because they're both obvious and unknown. Take the average football or baseball player in 1939 and compare him to the average 2022 football player. Basically the same game and same rules. But there's no way in hell the average 1939 player is comparable to the average 2022 player. Similarly, how do you compare, say, a pro basketball team in the NBA to an NCAA team or an Adriatic League team in Europe? Looking at the raw numbers of wins or points per game tells nothing about the qualitative differences which are obvious and unstated. But also unknown in the sense that you don't get consistent situations in which these teams are matched up.
Sorry for the digression, but finding analogies to wars seems similar, because you have to compare both across time and (unknown) capability levels that only get revealed once a war starts. Anyway, some specific differences.
1. The biggest technological difference is in the soldiers themselves. The 2022 soldier has orders of magnitude more human capital. The 1939 Polish soldier knew littler of the outside world, maybe couldn't read, maybe had never been in a car and definitely didn't own one. Training standards for common soldiers were quite low. Getting down to brass tacks, the average infantryman today is much more lethal and capable. In 1939 they couldn't operate independently and they didn't have very effective anti-tank and anti-aircraft options.
2. Communications and organizational capability is probably the second biggest difference. Communications and logistics allow much more independence for small group operations. In a way, there are significant diseconomies of scale here. Organizational capability allows small groups to spread out and communicate effectively. On the other hand, the high-level logistics of an armored advance aren't quite so flexible. In plain terms, your tanks still require huge and continuous amounts of fuel. This is hard to hide and easy to attack.
3. There's a lot more knowledge. In 1939, the idea of blitzkrieg itself was a technological advance. Nobody knew how to defend it because it hadn't been tried. Now we've got 80 years of experience dealing with it. As mentioned earlier, the tactics and capabilities of infantry have grown in orders of magnitude in response, whereas the tactics and capabilities of tanks in particular are kind of linear in progress.
So... I don't know if there is a good analogy to the current war. At best we can compare to previous wars, but we have to examine the differences and what they mean. Compared to 1939 Poland, I'd say the biggest similarities and differences are:
1. Russia mainly launched an armored invasion of a weaker neighbor. Unlike Nazi Germany however, the Russian invasion force didn't have even basic numerical superiority (The Nazis threw two well trained Army Groups of approximately 2 million men at approximately 1m disorganized and poorly supplied Poles). The Russians went in with a practical numerical disadvantage.
2. Poland never fully mobilized and its solders were brave but poorly trained and supplied. Ukraine has already been fighting for 7 years, was well prepared, and is receiving lots of outside support. 1939 supply chains and communications meant they were effectively on their own even though Britain and France were theoretically supposed to be supplying them.
3. German blitzkrieg tactics were totally novel in 1939. Nobody in the world had spent much time figuring out how to beat an armored invasion, and to the extent the Polish army was capable of anything, it wasn't this. Ukraine has a lot of modern innovations in communications, weaponry, and tactics that are explicitly designed to fight back against exactly this sort of invasion. One of the similarities, that's being exploited now but couldn't be then, are the particular reliance of armored forces on their supply chain.
4. Modern equipment is much more sophisticated and hard to replace. A WWII tank had no electronics to speak of. Even its gun was basically a line of sight weapon with a telescope and a slide rule. They could be mass produced and brought to bear quickly. Artillery was and still is an exercise in geometry and Newtonian physics. However, counter-fire abilities are much better now. In 1939, and in WWII in general, the Soviet army could mass artillery to obliterate opponents and there wasn't much the Germans could do to destroy artillery because 1) the Soviets gained air superiority, 2) the fronts were very static... very difficult for Nazi spotters to conceal themselves behind the Soviet lines and 3) technical counter-fire capabilities like radar were in their infancy.
You can see how far counter-fire has come by noting that today's artillery is largely self-propelled. They stop, set up, fire, and then have to move because their position can be triangulated quickly. This means it's harder to sustain and concentrate fire. Also, it means the equipment, again, has to be be more sophisticated, and thus fewer in number and harder to replace than its WWII counterparts.
Just like with tanks, the Ukrainians have tactics that have been developed to deal with artillery that didn't exist in WWII. They have radar that can instantly show where the artillery is. They Russians, for several reasons, can't completely cordon off safe areas around their positions because they're largely the ones advancing into enemy territory. The Ukrainians have their own artillery, which, although much less numerous, can be employed more selectively to take out the Russians when they reveal themselves.
Thank you for your detailed answer. As you point out in the beginning- because of how unique each war is, finding good analogies is very difficult. So I think the biggest challenge for anyone making predictions is to identify what information is most relevant in the grand scheme. I suspect that Russia is going to win relatively speedily (i.e. 1-2 months), but at a far higher cost than predicted. But I have a very low degree of certainty because of the challenges involved.
Have you found any texts in particular helpful in learning military strategy and doctrine?
If you want one single book, I’d say go get a copy of “How to Make War” by James F. Dunnigan. It’s hefty and hasn’t been updated in a few years but very thorough in detail about the mechanics of how countries fight.
One major missing element from the analysis is China. China manufactures just about everything. And Russia not only has good relations with China, they share a border. Yes, the sanctions on Russia effectively cut off goods from Europe, North America, S. Korea, and Japan. However, the rest of the world hasn't jumped on board. India, China, and Iran are not playing the sanctions game. So, Russia has nearby massive manufacturers that can supply most things they need, or launder supplies of anything they cannot get. For this reason I think that the people arguing that Russia will collapse from the sanctions are an echo chamber of hopes and dreams that are not rooted in reality. Russia is not going to go out and commit suicide because AirBNB and MacDonalds pulled out of Moscow.
Speaking of echo chambers... the idea that Russia's trade with the west amounts to AirBnB and McDonalds?
90 days later, it appears the West is far more dependent on Russian gas, oil, and titanium than Russia ever was on the West. Name one company that pulled out of Russia that actually made a dent in the Russian economy, please.
My view is that the end result in Ukraine will likely be a reduced western Ukraine with concessions to Putin, or a completely annexed Ukraine with no concessions. For the world the eventual borders of the region will not be what has the greatest impact, but rather the geopolitical shifts that occur as a result of the economic/sanctions war to follow. Russia and Ukraine are integral to global food/energy security, and I believe they can play this card to maximal effect, reshaping alliances and influence, and further destabilizing the fragile EU.
The idea the EU is fragile is overdone, where is the evidence for it? It is stronger now than a decade ago and more integrated - and nothing unites like a common foe.
I won’t argue with your assessment as it’s better than anything I could produce, however I think victory, as you define it, could well look like a defeat from many other angles to Russia (e.g. shattered domestic economy, chronic brain drain, rearmed neighbours, subservient to China and much more limited future geopolitical influence).
The Syrian government made retaking the country its only aim and did anything to deliver it, I think many western countries observers cannot believe Russia is equally one dimensional, and that Russia would actually consider this a victory. Maybe that’s where they go wrong.
Zelensky already said explicitly that he has given up joining NATO so I guess it is out of the question. It is possible he will agree to recognize the annexation of Crimea. In the Israeli newspapers it seems that PM Bennet who talked to both sides thinks it is a reasonable compromise. But it will be very flattering to Russia to define this result as a Russian victory. Their army was exposed as extremely incompetent and this war is a huge embarrassment for them.
You have only seen propaganda coming from one side. If Russia fought the way Americans fight, they would have destroyed the cities with artillery and leave them a smoking ruin. Instead, what you are seeing is like a python. They surround the cities, and then open corridors for civilians to leave and for the fighters to surrender. Then they increase the pressure. Then allow corridor again. Using this method in Syria they successfully demilitarized some cities without destroying them. Despite all the screaming coming from Ukrainian sources, Russia does not want to cause undue harm to Ukrainian civilians. That is why the war appears to be going slow to you. Also, it took the Germans longer to occupy Ukraine in WWII than it has taken Russia to take the same amount of territory. So, I'm not sure what your baseline is for saying that the Russian army was incompetent.
That is precisely what they did with Minsk I and II. It was Russia that initiated the ceasefire negotiations in both cases when Ukraine was desperate. But in both cases, the Ukrainians then refused to implement the agreements. I'm not sure Russia will fall for it a third time, but you never know.
I'm perplexed by your "victory conditions" because they don't seem to be related to what either side considers its victory conditions.
The Ex Ante state of affairs was Russian control over the Eastern Regions and Crimea. If that's all they leave with, that's a clear loss. The converse is true for Ukraine. In practice, it's not much of a loss to give up something you have no control over in the first place.
If we're more objective about this:
1. An implicit victory condition is always that the regime survives and continues to hold power. If, within, I dunno, 6 months to a year, of whatever settlement occurs, there's an overthrow or major civil war, then that side has lost.
2. The proximate cause of the conflict, going back 8 years, has been trade relations and economic power and not military defense. A Ukraine that remains free to economically join the West has won. A Russia powerless to stop this has lost.
3. Territory matters primarily to the extent of economic power. If Ukraine becomes landlocked (by losing Odessa as well as the coast of the Sea of Azov, it's significantly weakened and much more dependent on Russia. I don't know how this fits into the victory conditions. I think a Russia that gets Odessa and leaves Ukraine weak and landlocked, even if free to join the EU has probably won.
I don't think your view is that far off from the mainstream view, you just have a different definition of what a victor is. A reversion to something resembling the status quo ante would be seen as a Ukrainian victory, because most people (correctly IMO) see Russia's aims as being 'maximalist.' If you invade a country to take it over, then end up not taking it over and leaving, it's not a really a draw, it's a loss. If Russia gets NATO and the Ukraine to commit to Ukrainian neutrality, but fails to depose and replace the government or gain new territory, I'd call that a draw.
On the cost of the war to Russia though, the intensity of the war is such that in a few months it may already be the deadliest war Russia has fought since WW2, worse even that the Russo-Afghan War (which Russia ultimately couldn't stomach). The US couldn't handle 5k soldiers dying in Iraq in 8 years, and Russia has already lost around that many in 2 weeks. I expect in the next few months Putin will relent and make a deal more or less restoring the pre-war status quo, maybe with Ukraine recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk and agreeing not to join NATO for the time being (which Zelensky already seems open to).
Only person I’ve seen who has always thought Putin would go maximalist was Anatoly. I think world would be pretty surprised if there was any annexation beyond Crimea and Donbas, I think conventional wisdom now is Putin wanted to install a puppet in Kiev but now will settle for a no-NATO pledge or something possibly.
I think Russia will be willing to take more casualties and if not the world seems full of poor Middle Easterners and Africans willing to fight.
> I think Russia will be willing to take more casualties and if not the world seems full of poor Middle Easterners and Africans willing to fight.
You should update your assumptions. The starting point seemed to "Russia can obviously crush Ukraine based on its superior manpower and industrial capability. And the Russian leadership has no obstacles in doing so".
But recruiting mercenaries from Syria and the Central African Republic completely puts the lie to this belief.
Just take the L and learn from it instead of digging in to the ridiculous notion that Russia can throw limitless manpower at it by tapping into the military might of the Central African Republic.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate where you're coming from on most things, and I appreciate your willingness to make predictions, but you need to update your belief here instead of hand waiving away the obvious.
Ok, to clarify I mean "either annexation or installing a puppet" was the original aim. Settling for acknowledgement of Crimea and Donbas I think would be a disappointment for Russia.
You think Russia will use foreign mercenaries?
Yes they’ve announced they will
There were two wars between Finland and Soviet Union. Finland lost some of its territory. These wars were considered wins by Finnish side. And considered losses/draws by Soviet/Russian side.
Wars against Finland, but also 1st Chechen War were examples where Soviets/Russians were ready to give up if losses started to mount.
I'm really befuddled how nobody seems to notice the pretty remarkably successful high-tech component of the Russian assault. The Kalibrs, the Iskanders, the AA shooting down Ukrainian tactical ballistic missiles, the new choppers....
The Russian Air Force is getting worked over. There’s a serious lack of air superiority.
Sir, you do not account for China entering the war should NATO intervene or if the Russian regime is threatened. Admittedly, this takes us far afield, but interesting to contemplate: historians allege that one of the reasons Louis XIV began the Nine Years' War was because the Ottoman Empire was under duress from the Hapsburg Emperor. Surely, Louis also calculated that his war would be easier because the Emperor's forces and attention would be divided, but it is thought he wished in part to prevent the collapse of his allies the Ottomans, so that the Emperor would always have another flank to contend with. Now this unholy alliance between France and the Ottomans is nowhere near as tight and binding as the alliance between China and Russia. And surely, the Chinese are well aware that if the West is able to win fully here, that is install another Western puppet in Russia, China would be encircled and vulnerable to economic and diplomatic strangulation. So, to ease pressure on Russia, if indeed Russia was under duress, wouldn't and shouldn't the Chinese make a play for Taiwan and maybe even South Korea? From a grand strategy perspective, it seems absolutely necessary for China to ensure that regime change does not happen in Russia. How does your calculus change then? What would happen to the US economy if it had to sanction China? Would the US honor its alliances? Could it?
I would put the probability of this escalating to war with NATO at about 60%. But I'm not sure why you think Ukraine would win if NATO is pulled into the war. Most American analysis and simulations of a war between NATO and Russia in Europe find it highly probable that NATO would be defeated.
The probability of NATO intervening is small, I don't know how you get 60%. The US has been steadfast about not getting involved, and only Russia doing something outlandish like using nukes would change the calculus of that.
Looking at your comment 90 days later... NATO is clearly heavily involved in shipping weapons to Ukraine. Russia recognizes this and may do something about it. That is why I rank it as 60% then, and I still rank it as 60% probability of open war between Russia and NATO by the end of 2022.
Wow: I would not even try to forecast a WAR outcome but good for you for putting together that assessment. Keeping my response very brief as I am being inundated by various sundry requests for money, petitions and opinions: all of which the world can get along without: I was married (my second husband RIP to an Air Force Major) who was Aide to Camp to a Brig General: his job along with the General's was for Strategic Air Defense: and his job was WAR PLANNER. All those "so called War games" and exercises. My RIP father-in-law was Vice Admiral MIT aeronautical engineer/ Naval Academy anti-submarine warfare, and he was the FLAG SHIP officer in the Pacific. I remember when he came back from a long deployment to the Philippines (both of those guys had been to the Philippines where the US used to have a huge base (look it up)) after an unusually difficult tour: he had lost fifty pounds and was convinced we would be at war any day.. and these men were the BEST OF THE BEST.. literally: That is all I can say on that: I did see the revelation about the so-called bioweapons labs in Ukraine which do exist. The issue with trying to forecast as civilian without having gone to War College (yes that is what it is called and it is graduate level work divided into areas of expertise is the both the PROPAGANDA and LACK OF KNOWLEDGE and expertise. I cannot remember if I mentioned before the manic secrecy which in some cases is needed by our Govt and also the other GOVT who are involved in this WAR. What is being presented as the truth is the tip of the ICEBURG. Job well done. as we used to say in the Navy. :) gotta go