Unless Putin is deposed, and I see no likelihood of that, given that he is KGB and has control over the same, renamed FSB.
Putin is a "reincarnation of Stalin" he has an infinite supply of humans to throw into the meat grinder, as Stalin did at Moscow and Stalingrad. This supply of humans absorbs Ukrainian ammunition, until they run out of ammunition.
Either Ukraine folds and Russia absorbs it, after liquidating all of the patriots and combatants, or NATO gets involved, sooner rather than later, because if it doesn't stop Putin now, then it will have another and bigger aggression on it's hands, as Putin or Russia, falls back, ramps up it's armament industry to WWII levels, refits, retrains, corrects then takes on the rest of the former Soviet empire.
Moldova certainly next with the Soviet Enclave of Transnistrra, Lithuania to close the Suwalki Gap that separates Kaliningrad from Belarus.
It is 1938 all over again. Cave to the threat of a tyrant and you will have the war that you fear, only worse than it would be if you had stopped him when he was just getting started.
Umm, no, Russia doesn’t have an “infinite” supply of humans. Either now or in 1917. If Russia’s supply of humans is infinite, please explain how 1917 happened.
Human resources, unlike other war making resources are renewable. New cannon fodder is being born every day. You might not recall the Sino Soviet Conflict of 1969, well I do. There was discussion that China could launch a human wave against the Soviets, and if they machine gunned and cannonaded, the wave, the Chinese could still overwhelm the Soviets and end up in Moscow, because of fecundity,.
Oh, and whoever took the position in 1969 that China could have overwhelmed the USSR with human waves and reached Moscow is, frankly, an idiot. Even if you don’t take nukes in to account. While China was able to gain some ground in the Korean War (at big loss of life), if human wave tactics would be so successful, you’ll have to explain why Red China wasn’t able to overwhelm the south of Korea with human wave tactics, then (a far smaller area than the area between the Chinese border and Moscow, I’ll note).
LOL, wut? You do realize that they don’t grow humans in hours in test tubes, yes? Wars can and have decimated populations faster than babies can be born.
I wonder if Prigozhin's very graphic rant about what's happening to Russian fighters, will have the opposite effect to what he intends if it does start circulating widely. Putin is trying to make it sound as though everything is going according to plan.
Assuming Prigozhin has some credibility with the Russian population in general, this video could be a wakeup call and make them less likely to support the Special Military Operation.
Of course, mere lack of public support won't do anything on its own.
The real joker in the pack is the durability of America's commitment to help keeping Ukraine up to the fight. This is essential but by no means a given regardless of what the current Administration in Washington professes. American fickleness is legendary and certainly not predictable or necessarily durable beyond November 2024. This is ample incentive to keep Russia going in the direction it has been at least till the outcome of the next American election is known. The self-imposed weakness of the current Attorney General creates a major pall and uncertainty over the political landscape in America, as the most serious political criminality is unlikely to be apprehended in good time. I firmly believe this must be one of President Zelenskyy's worst nightmares.
Quite a lot of time before Nov. 2024. In the meanwhile I hope Zelensky is encouraged by the degree of support shown him by the Congressional Republicans. Their visit was very significant
In political time, there isn't a lot. Policy paralysis sets in well before the election date. As for the Congressional Republicans, yes, some encouragement there, but that party is a fractured opportunist clown-show in which I would not like to have to invest my future.
For me the "real joker in the pack" is China. They could supply Russia with the weapons it cannot supply itself. This would not lead to to the defeat of Ukraine because I belied Poland would send its soldiers in rather than see Ukraine destroyed (for Poland would then be next, 'Article 5' or not). Mind you a smaller Ukraine with a border along the Dnipro may yet transpire.
None of this is predictable, as one cannot assign a probability of occurrence to any of it without at least a theory informing the scenario and its key drivers. Normally, unless dealing with madmen (as has happened) countries' foreign policy derives from a coherent set of principles underlying governance, whether domestically or externally oriented. Self-interest is normally front and center within those principles.
China's main concern right now is rehabilitating and growing its economy. Russia is a poor country accounting for about 2% of World GDP, while North America, the EU, Australia and Japan account for about 60% of World GDP. If I were China I would have a pretty clear sense of where my bread is buttered and behave accordingly. They need only look to Russia to see how rapidly a strategic position in world trade can evaporate before their very eyes. China has some leeway, beyond which it can only play games at its peril and it has been warned.
Poland is in no position to take unilateral offensive action; it is a member of NATO and will behave consistently with NATO policy, which is essentially American policy as negotiated with other NATO members. The US will not allow NATO to drag it into World War Three because much as the current Administration has good reason to support the survival of democracy in Ukraine, it has no interest in triggering a World War over it - they've made that clear enough.
We can have no idea at this time what Ukraine's borders will look like when all is said and done. Zelenskyy is making threatening noises about taking back Crimea. He probably can't, but he can create negotiating space for ending up with everything except Crimea. Many variables. Let us see.
For regimes ruled by a single powerful autocrat like Russia and perhaps China, policy emerges from the unfathomable depths of a single individual's mind, not from the public world of discussion and argument. It then becomes wholly unpredictable.
Xi may still be constrained by that public world in which case what you say is, of course, correct. But he may not be, he may have turned inwards. He may also be powerful enough to effect whatever policy pops up from the depths. This may be to support his "limitless friendship" with Putin.
It is in this sense that China is "the joker in the pack"
Well, to get where you landed in this chain of reasoning you need to pile one untested hypothesis on top of another about how China is governed, what the constraints are or are not, and how the mind of that one individual works. I'm not ready to go there because it's a non-transparent entity in so many important respects. So, faute de mieux, I prefer to think in terms of interests and principles. It is very likely that China's interest in Russia-Ukraine is driven by its objectives for Taiwan. Unless they are totally irrational, which I find hard to believe on the face of it, they would be looking for every conceivable lesson of experience to be learned about what happens these days when one country invades another, thereby trampling over the interests of a super power. I don't see what other direct interest China could have in this situation. They are pushing buttons to gauge the backlash, which has most likely already happened - quietly behind the closed doors of discrete diplomacy, so that no-one looses face. "Face" is hugely important in many Asian cultures. So, I'm much less concerned about Chinese intervention than you appear to be, or than I am re a country such as Iran which has far less to lose by extending its rogue behavior into this arena as well as the others where it is involved.
Perhaps you meant to say crazy, crazy? Anyhow, yes from our perspective that's true. It remains to be seen for how long the internal situation there will allow this to carry on.
Not necessarily, but it's the premise that concerns me. Most of us don't know whether China is ruled by a single autocrat. It may appear that way from the outside, but the reality from the inside may be a lot more complex.
There’s no way for Poland to drag NATO in to a war considering that NATO is a purely defensive alliance.
And Poland certainly could fight in UA with whole regiments of “volunteers” (like Red China’s “volunteers” in the Korean War) nominally under UA command.
The US now is not what the US has been between 1941 and 2016. As well, there is a long and unique history explaining the American commitment to South Korea. I'm not sure this experience is transferable to the future of US support for Ukraine. Let us not forget that an extraordinarily small number of voters in "swing states" can make or break an administration.
There’s a decent amount of continuity. There really wasn’t a break in 2016. An American subcurrent just surfaced for the world to see. The US has always had an isolationist contingent and every country has an authoritarian contingent.
Richard, this takes us "OT",- and I agree, there always have been strains of authoritarianism and isolationist thinking, but I observe at the same time there had been an absolutely fundamental break in 2016. American voters, by slim margins in some key States, ushered in an administration hell-bent on de-institutionalization, the destruction of the rule of law and its replacement with the interests, ethos and methods of mobsters. The more serious historians now looking back on this experience are assessing that the USA came dangerously close to losing its democracy. And it could still happen, as the basic factors giving rise to 2016 did not go away simply because the democrats won by another slim margin, this time going their way, in 2020. American governance remains a fickle and worrisome proposition.
The usual well-informed and measured analysis by Prof Freedman, always worth reading, and circulating to friends.
In real time we are watching what happens when a ruthless kleptocratic tyrant runs wild, and acts out his destructive fantasies to the cost of his own countrymen as well as that of another country, and to a lesser degree the costs incurred throughout the world as a result of a gratuitous invasion.
Well it seems the next two steps are clear. Step one is the Ukrainian dealing with this Russian offensive if that is the word for it. It seems pretty clear it's not going to achieve anything but the Ukrainians have to inflict as heavy casualties as possible while doing what it can to minimize its own. The second phase is seeing how the next Ukrainian offensive goes. That will be the big issue because at the moment we don't know how successful it could be. Anything from a smashing success to a failure seems possible. At the end of that we'll have a better idea of the future of this war. That said the certainty seems to be that the Ukrainians are not going to give up and it's very hard to see the Russians learning to do effective offensives that would achieve it's strategic aims - even the modest one of capturing all of the Donbass.
Prof Stephen Kotkin has said that Putin still seems complacent and a shock to him would be useful.
He also said in an attritional phase of the war, Russia is likely to outproduce Ukraine. The west is not ramping up war production and this would take some time, if desirable.
He feels incorporating Ukraine into the EU in a reasonable timescale is a victory for Ukraine.
The West has a very large store, however. Pretty certain bigger than Russia’s. And while Russia can outproduce Ukraine, Russia definitely can’t outproduce the West (they’re already drawing from deep in warehouses, using armaments over half a century old).
That’s an interesting market. Lower than I would have hoped -- though I suppose it’s not quite as bad as it seems as the market could be pricing in (a) some possibility that Ukraine decides to focus its first counteroffensive on the Donbas rather than the south (not likely to be their first choice but not a 0% chance either especially if Russians divert a lot of troops to the south expecting a counteroffensive there and Ukraine then has an opportunity to take lightly guarded territory in the Donbas, similar to what happened with Kharkiv), and (b) some probability that Ukraine could be close to this goal or well on its way but it completes in October or November rather than September, or a key city like Melitopol is still being contested so ISW doesn’t fully cover the map in Ukraine’s favor all the way to the coast (which is what is required for this market to resolve yes).
Yes, exactly. For my money, I think Ukraine has a puncher's chance, but it's a tall order. Defending is just easier than attacking, and the terrain on the land bridge seems to favor the defenders. The Russians will be expecting an attack toward Melitopol-Mariupol, and they'll have their best units there in force. It won't be like the Kharkiv offensive. It will be Ukraine's best troops up against Russia's best troops -- or what is left of them.
The Russians will likely set their defense up so that an attack in Luhansk/Donbass would have the highest chance of success, followed by an offensive across the river in Kherson. I tend to think Ukraine will take what Russia gives them. Ukraine reclaiming a big swatch of territory in Donbass would also be helpful, just not nearly as helpful as cutting the land bridge.
If the US can get longer range missiles to Ukraine before the offensive, and back up/complicate Russian supply chains further, that would increase the chance of success, in my view. If the US gave Ukraine our 5.5 million rounds of cluster munitions to batter Russian front lines with, and/or gave Ukraine predator drones, I might feel differently.
One argument for is that, at least hopefully, the west is giving Ukraine enough to have a successful offensive. That they've war-gamed out precisely what Ukraine needs, and are supplying it. I have my doubts though.
1. Yes, the open plains in the south are not easy to attack.
2. The date is end of Sept 2023.
Also, what does “sever land bridge” mean? If Melitopol is taken, the “land bridge” to Crimea would be effectively severed with all routes within artillery range even if UA doesn’t reach the Sea of Azov.
Psychologically, we must be prepared for a years-long war (think Korean War, though it could be as long as Iran-Iraq).
Ukraine will prevail because, at stake, is the very existence of our nation. Russia can declare it feel threatened, but it will continue to exist as a nation. Regardless of what the dictator says, the existential character of this conflict is ours and not his. And many Ukrainians are ceasing to exist themselves to ensure existence to their fellow countrymen.
Unless Putin is deposed, and I see no likelihood of that, given that he is KGB and has control over the same, renamed FSB.
Putin is a "reincarnation of Stalin" he has an infinite supply of humans to throw into the meat grinder, as Stalin did at Moscow and Stalingrad. This supply of humans absorbs Ukrainian ammunition, until they run out of ammunition.
Either Ukraine folds and Russia absorbs it, after liquidating all of the patriots and combatants, or NATO gets involved, sooner rather than later, because if it doesn't stop Putin now, then it will have another and bigger aggression on it's hands, as Putin or Russia, falls back, ramps up it's armament industry to WWII levels, refits, retrains, corrects then takes on the rest of the former Soviet empire.
Moldova certainly next with the Soviet Enclave of Transnistrra, Lithuania to close the Suwalki Gap that separates Kaliningrad from Belarus.
It is 1938 all over again. Cave to the threat of a tyrant and you will have the war that you fear, only worse than it would be if you had stopped him when he was just getting started.
Umm, no, Russia doesn’t have an “infinite” supply of humans. Either now or in 1917. If Russia’s supply of humans is infinite, please explain how 1917 happened.
Human resources, unlike other war making resources are renewable. New cannon fodder is being born every day. You might not recall the Sino Soviet Conflict of 1969, well I do. There was discussion that China could launch a human wave against the Soviets, and if they machine gunned and cannonaded, the wave, the Chinese could still overwhelm the Soviets and end up in Moscow, because of fecundity,.
Oh, and whoever took the position in 1969 that China could have overwhelmed the USSR with human waves and reached Moscow is, frankly, an idiot. Even if you don’t take nukes in to account. While China was able to gain some ground in the Korean War (at big loss of life), if human wave tactics would be so successful, you’ll have to explain why Red China wasn’t able to overwhelm the south of Korea with human wave tactics, then (a far smaller area than the area between the Chinese border and Moscow, I’ll note).
The Russian population is falling.
LOL, wut? You do realize that they don’t grow humans in hours in test tubes, yes? Wars can and have decimated populations faster than babies can be born.
And yes, the Russian population is falling.
I wonder if Prigozhin's very graphic rant about what's happening to Russian fighters, will have the opposite effect to what he intends if it does start circulating widely. Putin is trying to make it sound as though everything is going according to plan.
Assuming Prigozhin has some credibility with the Russian population in general, this video could be a wakeup call and make them less likely to support the Special Military Operation.
Of course, mere lack of public support won't do anything on its own.
The real joker in the pack is the durability of America's commitment to help keeping Ukraine up to the fight. This is essential but by no means a given regardless of what the current Administration in Washington professes. American fickleness is legendary and certainly not predictable or necessarily durable beyond November 2024. This is ample incentive to keep Russia going in the direction it has been at least till the outcome of the next American election is known. The self-imposed weakness of the current Attorney General creates a major pall and uncertainty over the political landscape in America, as the most serious political criminality is unlikely to be apprehended in good time. I firmly believe this must be one of President Zelenskyy's worst nightmares.
Quite a lot of time before Nov. 2024. In the meanwhile I hope Zelensky is encouraged by the degree of support shown him by the Congressional Republicans. Their visit was very significant
In political time, there isn't a lot. Policy paralysis sets in well before the election date. As for the Congressional Republicans, yes, some encouragement there, but that party is a fractured opportunist clown-show in which I would not like to have to invest my future.
For me the "real joker in the pack" is China. They could supply Russia with the weapons it cannot supply itself. This would not lead to to the defeat of Ukraine because I belied Poland would send its soldiers in rather than see Ukraine destroyed (for Poland would then be next, 'Article 5' or not). Mind you a smaller Ukraine with a border along the Dnipro may yet transpire.
None of this is predictable, as one cannot assign a probability of occurrence to any of it without at least a theory informing the scenario and its key drivers. Normally, unless dealing with madmen (as has happened) countries' foreign policy derives from a coherent set of principles underlying governance, whether domestically or externally oriented. Self-interest is normally front and center within those principles.
China's main concern right now is rehabilitating and growing its economy. Russia is a poor country accounting for about 2% of World GDP, while North America, the EU, Australia and Japan account for about 60% of World GDP. If I were China I would have a pretty clear sense of where my bread is buttered and behave accordingly. They need only look to Russia to see how rapidly a strategic position in world trade can evaporate before their very eyes. China has some leeway, beyond which it can only play games at its peril and it has been warned.
Poland is in no position to take unilateral offensive action; it is a member of NATO and will behave consistently with NATO policy, which is essentially American policy as negotiated with other NATO members. The US will not allow NATO to drag it into World War Three because much as the current Administration has good reason to support the survival of democracy in Ukraine, it has no interest in triggering a World War over it - they've made that clear enough.
We can have no idea at this time what Ukraine's borders will look like when all is said and done. Zelenskyy is making threatening noises about taking back Crimea. He probably can't, but he can create negotiating space for ending up with everything except Crimea. Many variables. Let us see.
For regimes ruled by a single powerful autocrat like Russia and perhaps China, policy emerges from the unfathomable depths of a single individual's mind, not from the public world of discussion and argument. It then becomes wholly unpredictable.
Xi may still be constrained by that public world in which case what you say is, of course, correct. But he may not be, he may have turned inwards. He may also be powerful enough to effect whatever policy pops up from the depths. This may be to support his "limitless friendship" with Putin.
It is in this sense that China is "the joker in the pack"
Well, to get where you landed in this chain of reasoning you need to pile one untested hypothesis on top of another about how China is governed, what the constraints are or are not, and how the mind of that one individual works. I'm not ready to go there because it's a non-transparent entity in so many important respects. So, faute de mieux, I prefer to think in terms of interests and principles. It is very likely that China's interest in Russia-Ukraine is driven by its objectives for Taiwan. Unless they are totally irrational, which I find hard to believe on the face of it, they would be looking for every conceivable lesson of experience to be learned about what happens these days when one country invades another, thereby trampling over the interests of a super power. I don't see what other direct interest China could have in this situation. They are pushing buttons to gauge the backlash, which has most likely already happened - quietly behind the closed doors of discrete diplomacy, so that no-one looses face. "Face" is hugely important in many Asian cultures. So, I'm much less concerned about Chinese intervention than you appear to be, or than I am re a country such as Iran which has far less to lose by extending its rogue behavior into this arena as well as the others where it is involved.
Well, in terms of interests and principles, Putin invading Ukraine was cray-cray, but here we are.
Perhaps you meant to say crazy, crazy? Anyhow, yes from our perspective that's true. It remains to be seen for how long the internal situation there will allow this to carry on.
My point is that nations ruled by a single autocrat are inherently unpredictable because ... well I said that. Do you disagree with this?
Not necessarily, but it's the premise that concerns me. Most of us don't know whether China is ruled by a single autocrat. It may appear that way from the outside, but the reality from the inside may be a lot more complex.
There’s no way for Poland to drag NATO in to a war considering that NATO is a purely defensive alliance.
And Poland certainly could fight in UA with whole regiments of “volunteers” (like Red China’s “volunteers” in the Korean War) nominally under UA command.
Why Europe really needs to take responsibility for the security of its continent.
Though note that the “fickle” US has kept troops in Korea for over 70 years now.
The US now is not what the US has been between 1941 and 2016. As well, there is a long and unique history explaining the American commitment to South Korea. I'm not sure this experience is transferable to the future of US support for Ukraine. Let us not forget that an extraordinarily small number of voters in "swing states" can make or break an administration.
There’s a decent amount of continuity. There really wasn’t a break in 2016. An American subcurrent just surfaced for the world to see. The US has always had an isolationist contingent and every country has an authoritarian contingent.
Richard, this takes us "OT",- and I agree, there always have been strains of authoritarianism and isolationist thinking, but I observe at the same time there had been an absolutely fundamental break in 2016. American voters, by slim margins in some key States, ushered in an administration hell-bent on de-institutionalization, the destruction of the rule of law and its replacement with the interests, ethos and methods of mobsters. The more serious historians now looking back on this experience are assessing that the USA came dangerously close to losing its democracy. And it could still happen, as the basic factors giving rise to 2016 did not go away simply because the democrats won by another slim margin, this time going their way, in 2020. American governance remains a fickle and worrisome proposition.
The usual well-informed and measured analysis by Prof Freedman, always worth reading, and circulating to friends.
In real time we are watching what happens when a ruthless kleptocratic tyrant runs wild, and acts out his destructive fantasies to the cost of his own countrymen as well as that of another country, and to a lesser degree the costs incurred throughout the world as a result of a gratuitous invasion.
Well it seems the next two steps are clear. Step one is the Ukrainian dealing with this Russian offensive if that is the word for it. It seems pretty clear it's not going to achieve anything but the Ukrainians have to inflict as heavy casualties as possible while doing what it can to minimize its own. The second phase is seeing how the next Ukrainian offensive goes. That will be the big issue because at the moment we don't know how successful it could be. Anything from a smashing success to a failure seems possible. At the end of that we'll have a better idea of the future of this war. That said the certainty seems to be that the Ukrainians are not going to give up and it's very hard to see the Russians learning to do effective offensives that would achieve it's strategic aims - even the modest one of capturing all of the Donbass.
Excellent! It's why I subscibe.
Very insightful as always.
Prof Stephen Kotkin has said that Putin still seems complacent and a shock to him would be useful.
He also said in an attritional phase of the war, Russia is likely to outproduce Ukraine. The west is not ramping up war production and this would take some time, if desirable.
He feels incorporating Ukraine into the EU in a reasonable timescale is a victory for Ukraine.
A nice short WSJ film on USA military weapons supply problems.
Javelin, they may not be able to ramp up until 2026.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wsj-explains/us-weapons-pledge-to-ukraine-exposes-cracks-in-defense-supply-chain/AD29A2B9-97BE-4C0A-83B8-115DEB73821F
The West has a very large store, however. Pretty certain bigger than Russia’s. And while Russia can outproduce Ukraine, Russia definitely can’t outproduce the West (they’re already drawing from deep in warehouses, using armaments over half a century old).
Nice article. What are your thoughts, Lawrence, on the probability of a successful Ukrainian offensive that cuts the land bridge? Metaculus & Insight give the odds around 31-35%. https://insightprediction.com/m/154445/will-ukraine-sever-the-land-bridge-to-crimea-by-september-30th-2023
That’s an interesting market. Lower than I would have hoped -- though I suppose it’s not quite as bad as it seems as the market could be pricing in (a) some possibility that Ukraine decides to focus its first counteroffensive on the Donbas rather than the south (not likely to be their first choice but not a 0% chance either especially if Russians divert a lot of troops to the south expecting a counteroffensive there and Ukraine then has an opportunity to take lightly guarded territory in the Donbas, similar to what happened with Kharkiv), and (b) some probability that Ukraine could be close to this goal or well on its way but it completes in October or November rather than September, or a key city like Melitopol is still being contested so ISW doesn’t fully cover the map in Ukraine’s favor all the way to the coast (which is what is required for this market to resolve yes).
Yes, exactly. For my money, I think Ukraine has a puncher's chance, but it's a tall order. Defending is just easier than attacking, and the terrain on the land bridge seems to favor the defenders. The Russians will be expecting an attack toward Melitopol-Mariupol, and they'll have their best units there in force. It won't be like the Kharkiv offensive. It will be Ukraine's best troops up against Russia's best troops -- or what is left of them.
The Russians will likely set their defense up so that an attack in Luhansk/Donbass would have the highest chance of success, followed by an offensive across the river in Kherson. I tend to think Ukraine will take what Russia gives them. Ukraine reclaiming a big swatch of territory in Donbass would also be helpful, just not nearly as helpful as cutting the land bridge.
If the US can get longer range missiles to Ukraine before the offensive, and back up/complicate Russian supply chains further, that would increase the chance of success, in my view. If the US gave Ukraine our 5.5 million rounds of cluster munitions to batter Russian front lines with, and/or gave Ukraine predator drones, I might feel differently.
One argument for is that, at least hopefully, the west is giving Ukraine enough to have a successful offensive. That they've war-gamed out precisely what Ukraine needs, and are supplying it. I have my doubts though.
Seems like decently high odds given that
1. Yes, the open plains in the south are not easy to attack.
2. The date is end of Sept 2023.
Also, what does “sever land bridge” mean? If Melitopol is taken, the “land bridge” to Crimea would be effectively severed with all routes within artillery range even if UA doesn’t reach the Sea of Azov.
Psychologically, we must be prepared for a years-long war (think Korean War, though it could be as long as Iran-Iraq).
Ukraine will prevail because, at stake, is the very existence of our nation. Russia can declare it feel threatened, but it will continue to exist as a nation. Regardless of what the dictator says, the existential character of this conflict is ours and not his. And many Ukrainians are ceasing to exist themselves to ensure existence to their fellow countrymen.
You response is a non sequitur.
Could you go through your post again, and attach some probabilities? At the moment, it is difficult to see what you think is most likely to happen.