Well, as my daddy used to say, “We shall see what we shall see.” If you are right, feel free to crow about it. LOL
You could have said the exact same thing about Napoleon in 1812. And Putin is no Napoleon. He’s not even Napoleon III.
Agreed - The best case scenario is Putin is not very smart. The worst case scenario is that he has a well laid out wicked plan. Do we have a move (like in chess) if it is the latter ? (We cannot put all our moves in the Putin is not very smart basket)
I am looking for the moves and countermoves (aka strategy for the US). Hoping is not a strategy !
Step 1: Throw your best troops and materiel into a meat grinder for six months, incurring more casualties than the US did during the entire Vietnam war, to the point where you’re forced to resort to drafting prisoners and old men and arming them with rusted-to-the-point-of-uselessness WWII-era rifles.
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
So far every decision of Putin’s has been a massive failure. He rules over a corrupt kleptocracy, and his military was staffed by desperate people who had to sell weapons and supplies to make a living. There’s no evidence that Putin has “planned his moves much ahead”, and plenty of evidence that Putin had no idea how incompetent his military was, and how united the West would be to help Ukraine defend itself.
The endgame scenario is that Ukraine pushes Russian forces out of Ukraine. That’s it, and we’re well on our way to that scenario. We just have to keep supplying Ukrainian forces to do this. Putin can’t win with the military he has – corrupt, unmotivated forces can’t defeat a motivated and well supplied army that’s fighting in their own country. Nukes won’t change this.
Considering the failures at most levels, it is hard to say Putin has a working plan. I’m sure he had a plan that goes back at least to the success of 2014 and sad lack of response to taking Crimea. But clearly he underestimated the response to a full invasion and overestimated the readiness of his forces. He really didn’t understand the logistics of his military were piss poor either.
So had a plan, yes.
Had a realistic plan based on actual facts, Hell No!
I think he has a well laid out plan, but I think he badly under-estimated the kind of resistance he is getting from Ukraine. I honestly believe that, had he known beforehand, he would have held off until we elected another Russia-friendly president who would not have provided Ukraine with anywhere near the kind of support that is being provided by our present president.
He’s kind of stuck, now. If he withdraws, it will be viewed as a horrendous blunder and a humiliating defeat. If he stays, he is risking further military losses and an increasing loss of public support.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
- Mike Tyson
I think the question makes perfect sense.
What’s the US hoping to get out of supplying all this aid and intelligence to Ukraine? We’re not doing it entirely out of altruism and a desire to thwart a would-be tyrant.
There’s got to be some sort of desired end state after everything’s done that is advantageous to the US in some fashion, and that’s why we’re spending billions of dollars, not because we particularly want to stick it to Russia, or help Ukraine.
To quote Bablyon-5:
The US has a number of reasons to support Ukraine, some of which are altruistic and some less so:
-
Ukraine are allies and it would be bad not to come to their aid in some way.
-
It is generally bad policy to let wars of aggression (< cough > in Europe < cough>) go unchallenged.
-
Putin has escalated his increasing strategy of acquisition of other countries’ land into a full-on war of aggression. We have tolerated his prior actions on the (fairly deluded IMO) assumption that he could be contained to small gains and that challenging him would produce worse outcomes than acquiescence, but this time Russia have crossed the line and must be stopped in the interest of preventing ongoing and future harm.
-
Russia is openly threatening our NATO allies and could drag us into eventual head-to-head conflict with them. Better to stop them in Ukraine outright.
-
It is in our national interest to weaken Russia, which has spent the last several years actively working to destabilize the US.
-
A war by proxy is far more palatable to the American people than one in which US soldiers could get killed, and we can achieve the same aims by getting Ukrainians to do all the fighting.
-
We get to clear out stocks of old weaponry and/or try out new weaponry in the field, both of which are good for the military-industrial complex.
-
It is pissing off the Republicans, who are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia these days.
Yes, but most war plans are intended to get fewer troops killed, and lose less land, both of which their alleged “deceptions” have utterly failed at.
As for the US, their desired outcome would be status quo ante bellum. Removal of Putin from power, and the elimination of Russia as an ongoing threat to its neighbors would be nice, but absent a willingness to actually invade Russia itself, with all that that implies, getting back to a situation where all remaining Russian troops are back in Russia itself is the best most likely outcome.
The real question is, what would everyone settle for in order to stop the fighting? The Ukrainians have said they won’t settle for anything less than the above, but that could change if Russia suddenly gets its shit together. Ultimately, I expect the US will go along with whatever Ukraine finally decides to accept.
I am sure one scenario being planned for is Putin remaining in power, so there needs to be a pathway for him to have an “out” from all this chaos and destruction he’s reponsible for. As long as he has an out, then I think he may hesitate on using the nukes. Back him into a corner with only humiliation or further and more catastropic military losses and he may get desperate.
Whenever this ends, Russia needs to help in paying for the rebuilding of Ukraine. I am not saying to empoverish Russia for this, but countries shouldn’t be able to just go into a neighbor, shit all over everything, and then leave at some point with “oh, we made a mistake, sorry!”
Agreed! We don’t want another Treaty of Versailles, but the offender does need to be a part of Ukraine’s recovery efforts.
I really think your #4 is the big one. Putin’s made enough threatening noise over the years about the Baltics and NATO, as well as more overt bullshit like annexing the Crimea and the proxy wars in Ukraine several years back, that the US and NATO aren’t tolerating it anymore.
And at first, I suspect that the aid was a way to poke Putin in the eye, even though we all expected Ukraine to end up conquered. At this point, it’s something else. To some degree, inertia and keeping our promises is pushing it forward, but what’s the end goal of this? All the Ukrainian territory regained, Russia pushed back to the pre-war borders, fighting over, and that’s it? Of course, Ukraine will have a strong, experienced military, and NATO will almost certainly continue to aid/supply/train them. I would suspect that if they win convincingly enough, NATO could extend an invitation to join, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
The outcome I hope America is working towards: Reclaiming all of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Russia economically and psychologically devastated, EU and NATO membership for Ukraine, and Ukraine becoming a close ally and with a highly Westernized military.
The outcome I expect America will attain: Less than half of what was mentioned above.
Fundamentally, a plan is only as good as the information you have upon which you build the plan. If you plan a road trip on the assumption that a bridge will be where you need it, and then there’s no bridge there, your plan turns out to be worthless, and now you’re stuck improvising.
And Putin’s information is almost universally crap. He’s fostered a system of lies and corruption, in which no one has a vested interest in telling the truth. So it doesn’t matter how detailed or brilliant his plan might have been, it was always doomed to failure, because it was always predicated on bad information.
Well said. If someone asked me, “What do think is the most powerful weapon?” My answer wouldn’t be nukes, it would be, information.
If it’s not, the end game should be a Russian western border compiled of militarily unassailable nations with greater democracy and prosperity that put pressure on Russia’s kleptocracy and have the country join with the other civilized nations of Europe.
One of Putin’s biggest fears is a populace which envies its neighbors.
Unfortunately, information alone does little good if it can’t be acted upon. If a populace knows that its government sucks, but also knows that any individual who stands up is likely to be executed/tortured at once, it’s still rather paralyzed for action.
That’s not really just a “That’s it?” scenario (particularly as “Ukrainian territory regained” is likely to include Crimea etc from 2014).
An end in which the Russian military loses the war with heavy losses of personnel and equipment and in which Russia loses not only all the territories it was claiming but the stuff it took in 2014, plus the enormous economic damage it’s going to suffer for years to come including Europe’s accelerated move away from dependence on Russia oil and gas, is not an inconsequential outcome. And the US could regain - is already beginning to regain - some of the geopolitical power it had lost under Trump, as long as the Republican Party don’t take over again.