Notes

How will the war in Ukraine end? The potential paths forward in Vladimir Putin's ill-conceived invasion
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the return of major war to the European continent. The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too. More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Meanwhile, Indian thinktank Observer Research Foundation's Russia expert, Nandan Unnikrishnan, said India was unlikely to sign "any major military deal" with Russia because it would cross a red line with the US.


In Vietnam, the United States exaggerated its civil and military successes in shaping an effective South Vietnamese government and military forces that could stand on their own. It reached a peace settlement with North Vietnam after an apparent U.S.-driven military victory based on false assumptions about a broader level of grand strategic success. It then left a fragile South Vietnamese state and phased out it much of its aid, creating an outcome where South Vietnam’s military and civil weaknesses prevented it from surviving. So far, however, the United States has failed to lead effectively in several key areas of grand strategy—repeating some aspects of its failed approach to grand strategy in its other recent wars. In Korea, U.S. efforts to push a military victory too far into North Korea without considering the grand strategic impact on China forced U.S.-led forces to fight a longer war that ended in a stalemate where the outcome was a ceasefire, rather than a true peace.

Is UK conscription for a citizen army a realistic plan?
But the resolution of the credible-commitment problem was complicated. In the Second World War, it was resolved by the destruction of the Nazi regime, the rewriting of Germany’s constitution, and the partition of Germany. Tanisha Fazal, a scholar at the University of Minnesota who is writing a book on battlefield medicine, was struck by the low ratio of Russian wounded to killed. The historical ratio in the last hundred and fifty years has been around three or four to one. In recent wars, such as in Afghanistan, the U.S. had managed to get the wounded-to-killed ratio as high as ten to one, meaning that fewer soldiers were dying after being wounded.

And its use carries with it the risk, again, of even greater involvement in the war by the U.S. Most at best have limited recent combat experience, and even the United States is far more trained and ready to fight another Afghanistan or Iraq conflict than a war in Europe. The United States should avoid prematurely pressuring Ukraine to compromise on terms and territories and refrain from unilateral actions that may mostly affect its European partners rather than the United States.
Previous wars, like the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, too have hinged on such external assistance. At different times in this conflict Russia has resembled Iran’s position, and Ukraine has mirrored Iraq’s in that war — if only incompletely — said Jeremy Morris, professor of global studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Meanwhile, Western powers have pledged coveted battle tanks to Ukraine, and there is much talk of a new Russian spring offensive.

Russia’s Putin says ‘obvious’ Ukraine shot down plane over Belgorod
Only liberalizers who withdrew forces from Ukraine might relieve the pressure. Throughout the war, Ukraine has had to petition the West for weapons and support to stave off losing their country to the invading Russian forces. The Russian leader's future may depend on the country's powerful security forces, such as those led by Yevgeny Prigozhin or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. If the United States falters in dealing with Ukraine, it will lose security and influence relative to two great powers by failing to pay the price of dealing with even one. The outcome of the war in Ukraine will affect vital U.S. strategic interests for years to come.


The Ukrainians do not have unlimited resources of course, especially artillery ammunition and long-range precision weapons. It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. This will make the war in Ukraine a longer and more traumatic enterprise than anything Europe has known since the middle of the last century. The coming year will demonstrate whether Russia - and its suppliers in North Korea and Iran - or Ukraine - and its Western backers - are able and prepared to meet the voracious demands of industrial-age warfare.


The US has sent billions in crucial weaponry to help Kyiv fend off Russian attacks. But with Republicans poised to take control of Congress, there may be significant implications for the war. After years spent scaling-back artillery, ammunition and tank investments, Europe has cleared out old warehouses to supply Ukraine with the weapons it wants and needs to fight Russia. This kind of unstable settlement has worked with the two Koreas, but only at the cost of constantly being on the edge of another war. It would also do little or nothing to stabilize the overall security of Western Europe and particularly the European states along the Russian border. It instead would create the equivalent of a “rules-based disorder” where European states found their own solution to securing their position relative to Russia along different lines.


The war in Ukraine has become a proxy war between Russia and the United States and its European allies. More broadly, the course of the war and its outcome will have a major impact on Russia’s nuclear build-up, its rejection of arms control, its ties to China, and its relations with states outside Europe and the rest of NATO. The United States and its allies also need to be far more realistic about how long a war could last and how long Ukraine will need major amounts of aid.

Commenting on an ongoing war is difficult, especially for someone not close to the front lines. In any case, the best way to find out who was stronger was to actually start fighting. It was once reluctant but now provides Ukraine with Stinger and IRIS-T low-altitude anti-air missiles, HIMARS rocket artillery, and Patriot high-altitude air defenses. There are more indiscriminate artillery and rocket strikes across Ukraine. That hasn't let up, if only because it's a powerful emotional and recruitment tool.
All too often, however, they turn into enduring struggles, and wars of attrition like the war Russia is now inflicting on Ukraine involve far more than military casualties. It will have far more impact on America’s status as an effective global power than America’s direct wars against nations in areas that were relatively remote and of tertiary strategic importance. It cannot be divorced from its impact on a revived nuclear arms race and the impact of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons. No https://diigo.com/0vb9sd can ignore the grim realities Ukraine faces this winter and spring. Ukrainian forces did well with outside support in 2022, and Russia suffered important losses both on the battlefield and from the economic sanctions imposed by Europe, the United States, and other powers. Nevertheless, statements such as those made by General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggesting that Russia is losing needs to be put in careful context.

Regardless of the emphasis on China in both the Trump and Biden administrations’ national and defense strategies, the Ukraine war demonstrates that Russia remains a threat that is as real as China. Toward the end of the war in Afghanistan, the United States only focused on a peace process after its real objective became withdrawing from the fight. The chaotic collapse of Kabul may have taken days, but the collapse of the Afghan government and its forces was triggered by U.S. failures in strategy and leadership over two decades and four years of peace efforts.

What are some of the possible scenarios that politicians and military planners are examining? At the same time, the need for an ongoing effort to shape and implement an effective grand strategy for the war in Ukraine goes far beyond the fighting in Ukraine. Russia was not present at the discussions, however, and U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby stated ahead of the talks that the White House did not expect any "tangible deliverables." According to this approach, wars will end when the problem that caused the war is resolved by fighting on the battlefield. "The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open," said UN Secretary General António Guterres.
It's perhaps the only thing more complicated than sanctions enforcement, and this question touches on both. So, in recent years, Ukrainians have reached further into their history to argue that Ukrainian independence existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire before it. When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, the new Russian Federation inherited all of the USSR's treaties, diplomatic relationships, even embassies.

Must there be a period of months or years in which Russia does not fire a single shell into Ukraine? Tying Ukrainian NATO membership to such conditions would give Putin another incentive never to meet them. Offering Article 5 protection to Ukrainian territory in this fashion would be akin to admitting a divided Germany to NATO after World War II and to America’s security pact with South Korea after the armistice that halted the Korean War without reunifying the Korean Peninsula.


I was more struck by his description of the problem he was trying to solve. Suppose, he wondered, if the four regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) or perhaps the whole of eastern and southern Ukraine were fully occupied. A lot was riding on Ukraine’s offensive, including the added value that might result from western equipment transfers and training programmes.

Read More: https://diigo.com/0vb9sd