The Winter War of 2022 drags on and both Russia and Ukraine (and its Western backers) plan for a long war. I was not seduced by thoughts of short and glorious war.
I doubted Putin could get a short and glorious war against Ukraine because Russia was weaker than thought. Technology hasn't sped up war. And we'd have to prepare to sustain a long war.
In part this comes from following the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. And in 1996, as the U.S. military became overly infatuated with the extreme claims of the Revolution in Military Affairs, I warned that the 1980s war showed that long war was possible:
Iraq's invasion is a stunning reminder of how a quick, cheap and victorious blitzkrieg against an obviously outmanned and outgunned enemy can degenerate into a grueling war of attrition. On paper the Iraqi army was a mechanized juggernaut, but the real army in 1980 was poorly trained, armed with second-rate equipment, and led by officers more concerned with survival in the system than with effectiveness. It was ordered into action by a government that failed to formulate a realistic plan to win and reluctant to expose it to casualties.
Yes, that war was a mix of modern and old weapons that peer states in theory can avoid. But the war dragged on by pausing to rearm and reorganize. Running out of men and materiel was no bar to continuing the war, as I wrote in a summary of the Iran-Iraq War pre-dating that published paper:
The war as a whole showed us that modern war is not inherently brief. Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakistani wars since World War II have misled us into thinking this is the norm. Desert Storm has seemingly confirmed this view and America now seeks a small but lethal Army that will strike hard, win fast, and come home. Yet by fighting on for years when most believed the First Gulf War would have to end rapidly, the Iraqis and Iranians have provided us with a much needed lesson that wars do not just end on their own. By simply pausing instead of furiously fighting Lemming-like until all weapons and ammunition are expended, these two states fought for nearly eight years.
Ukraine shows that aspect too as Russia and Ukraine fight with what they can get rather than with what they'd like. I've long wondered if any soldier ever goes home by Christmas.
In 1999 I argued in Army magazine that the Army National Guard had to get a defined role in war because assuming short and glorious "major theater wars" wasn't the way to bet.
So I have a healthy respect for things going wrong in the victory parade.
Yes, I expected a rapid victory in Iraq in 2003, writing a couple days before the war, "We'll be outside Baghdad's western suburbs in a week." Grant me that I was spot on concerning the major combat operations phase. I was agnostic on the issue of resistance after the war and assumed our local allies could defeat any resisting Baathists with our backing but with minimal direct combat support. But I had good reasons for being wrong about the insurgencies--that we defeated.
Just want to be transparent about that assessment.
When war starts, surely soldiers will go home by some Christmas in the future. Well, the survivors anyway. In the fall of 2022 I was expressing worries that Russia was getting the gift of time when its army was at its weakest. Russia used that time and rebuilt. We failed to exploit Russia's weakness to end the war sooner. Let's aim to give Ukrainians that Christmas sooner than it seems possible now. And make the home they go back to part of an independent and free Ukraine.
And maybe a war that ends that way prevents us from wondering what Christmas our soldiers at war in Europe will come home by.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.