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Paul M Sotkiewicz's avatar

Lawrence, brilliant exposition. The best example of a “stalemate” in the sense it is used today may have been Korea, for which there was no treaty ever signed. That was after the initial period of big movements back and forth across the peninsula.

What western media and many policymakers fail to understand is the “long game” or as you phrased it “the long middle” and that wars in this stage especially are fought across multiple dimensions (attrition of personnel and materiel, logistics, production, resupply, training, psychological, political, economic).

We in the west have become impatient and too singularly focused on one or thing (i.e. movement on a map) and are always wanting to have simple explanations and eschew detail.

Thank you for introducing a new German word for this situation. As an economist by training with a requisite background in game theory (von Neumann and Morgenstern in 1944 and later John Nash among others) a good description would be the “best response” of the opponent but the best response is only really a series of bad choices so in effect it is the least bad choice and over time the least bad choice deteriorates over time. Not a pithy explanation but seems to fit.

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d. a. t. green's avatar

Following the Barbie review, we should all now clamour for Lawrence Freedman to review chess matches and poker games.

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