(Warning: This is entirely too long for the level of insight provided. The only real value in reading this is if you are curious as how the brain of the Ape Man works when confronted by a mystery).

I have proven that I have no understanding of the human element behind the Ukraine war. In fact, my understanding is so poor it has been almost a good guide in reverse as to what was going to happen. In other words, based on my past performance you would do well to think that the people involved will act in a way that is the exact opposite of what I think they will do. So why have I been so wrong?

It is tempting to throw up my hands and say that the Russians (or at least Putin) are irrational and that is why their behavior does not conform to my expectations. But even irrational people are predictable once you get to know them. Putin has been around long enough and lead Russia in enough conflicts that I thought I knew what the pattern of his behavior looked like. If you look at the conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and the earlier Ukraine conflicts it seems like a clear pattern becomes apparent.

The pattern seems pretty simple. First you prepare the justification for what you are going to do all the while denying that you are going to do it. Then you use overwhelming force carefully calibrated to be as risk free as possible to accomplish limited objectives. Last, you seek to reach some kind of accommodation that will end the conflict on sustainable terms. Russianphiles would probably argue with first part of this pattern and Russianphobes would object to the last part of this pattern, but to my eyes it still does a pretty good job of describing all of the recent conflicts that Russia has had save the most recent one.

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I was the 9 years old when the Berlin wall fell. I was 11 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. My generation never knew the draft and never really knew a world in which the US was at risk. The fall of the Twin Towers was traumatic for my generation because it revealed that there were people in the world who wanted to kill Americans. But except for a few brief days when nobody knew the full extent of what had happened, no one thought America as whole was in danger. On the scale of a brief national history that includes the Civil War and World War II, the Twin Towers do not even register.

Confident in our power, we destroyed nations to make sure no one would even think of attacking us again. Never in this entire process was the thought that America itself was in the balance. Instead, the debates were about dollars and cents. They were about whether the gains were worth the cost. Whether we were killing bad guys faster than were making more enemies for ourselves. It was a consumer nation at war and we made war as if it was just another product to be consumed or not as we saw fit.

That world is dying and may already be dead. Now war carries with it the devil’s choice of slavery or death. America is not longer a consumer. Now America is just a gambler trying to figure which door has the least bad surprise while trying to pretend it can reason its way to the right answer.

Not everyone has figured that out yet. But the educated fools are getting increasingly panic stricken. Now some people in the Pro-Ukraine camp are starting to openly talk about the need to make sure Ukraine gives in before Russia uses nukes. They are not in the majority for sure. But it is becoming more and more real for people the weaker and weaker that Russia appears on the battle field.

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About two weeks ago, I wrote a post asking “What is up in Ukraine?” in which I tried to figure out how the war in Ukraine was going to go. It was a purely an intellectual exercise in trying to see how much truth I could gather through the fog of censorship and competing ideological blind spots. It seemed like a good place to try to exercise those skills before they became relevant in some issue closer to home. My tentative bet was that Ukraine had the advantage because Russia was holding the line in Kherson with airborne units that should have been in reserves. My logic was that if Ukraine managed to break through anywhere, it would be really bad for the Russians because they would have nothing to contain the break out with.

Needles to say, a lot has changed since then. The Ukrainians did force a massive break out and the Russians had nothing to stop them with in a timely manner. I can’t claim too much credit as I never would have guessed that Ukraine had the forces to pressure Russia in two locations. I was envisioning a grinding war attrition followed by a collapse of Russian forces in the Kherson region. I envisioned Russia holding Kherson itself due the defensible nature of the large urban area as well as their ability to support it with artillery safely a crossed the river.

So what have we learned and what can we see about the future? Granting all the same caveats in the first post, these are my thoughts on what we have learned that is beyond an honest person’s ability to dispute….. Continue reading →