Our leaders speak too much of saving lives and ending the war and not enough about winning the war.
The war goes on in Ukraine. It seems like Ukraine is gaining an edge. And something could break their way any day.
The Kherson front has been quiet and I wonder if Ukraine has figured out a way to leap that formidable barrier to take advantage of thinned out Russian defenders. Ukrainian strikes on western Crimea seem like they are pushing the Russians back from helping the Kherson front.
Or maybe not. Maybe the war is as stalemated as the map suggests.
Maybe preparing Ukraine for the winter is Plan A. But Ukraine needs to drive Russia out of Ukraine:
“Air defense is saving lives. So, I urge this group to continue to dig deep on ground-based air defense for Ukraine.” He also emphasized the necessity for air defense to “protect Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, including grain and energy supplies.”
While that is all true, no amount of air defense is going to displace the 200,000 troops in occupied Ukraine that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley described in an interview with CNN on September 18. That will only be accomplished through offense.
Ukraine won't win this war sitting on the defensive.
The appeal for air defenses is good. But the "saving lives" justification is false compassion without prioritizing helping Ukraine win the war. Lowering the per-day casualties while extending the war will increase casualties--not lower them, as I warned over 25 years ago:
Our soldiers' lives are indeed valuable, and our country's insistence that we minimize risks to them is laudable (as well as being necessary due to the small size of the Army). Undue concern, however, is false compassion and, as was the case for Iraq in 1980, could result in even greater casualties in a prolonged war should we refuse--because of the prospects of battle deaths--to seize an opportunity for early victory.
Russia won't leave voluntarily without experiencing pain that threatens worse things than losing. Which means, as I noted in this post, that Russia could prepare for another war using its current conquests as the launching pad. So the only way to "end the war" is to drive the Russians out and make the price of fighting too high.
That lesson of futility might be a good lesson for China to get if it thinks it can carry out a two-step invasion and conquest of Taiwan.
UPDATE: A timely ISW special report:
There is no path to real peace other than helping Ukraine inflict an unequivocal military defeat on Russia and then helping to rebuild Ukraine into a military and society so strong and resilient that no future Russian leader sees an opportunity like the ones Putin misperceived in 2014 and 2022. This path is achievable if the West commits to supporting Ukraine in the prolonged effort likely needed to walk down it. If the West is instead lured by the illusion of some compromise, it may end the pain for now, but only at the cost of much greater pain later. Putin has shown that he views compromise as surrender, and surrender emboldens him to reattack. This war can only end not when Putin feels that he can save face, but rather when he knows that he cannot win.
Yeah, Putin already has an exit strategy.
But I'm seeing signs of my worries:
If Ukraine can't achieve that Saratoga-level of victory, Western support for Ukraine might shift to simply helping Ukraine hold the line--with the risks of that kind of nuanced calculations on what is enough--rather than pushing Russia back further. NATO's financial, economic, and military stockpile expenditures might shift away from helping Ukraine win in favor of a ceasefire that actually rescues Russia from the worst costs of its invasion.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
