Helmuth von Moltke is right again. His quote that “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy” holds true. Russia underestimated Ukrainian resistance. It also hasn’t displayed much logistic finesse. But the West also made some bad assumptions. First, it overestimated the Russian military. A month ago we all engaged in speculation whether Russia would form a land bridge to Crimea, or perhaps take Ukraine right up to the Dnieper, and any of that seemed more or less plausible.
Something else the West got wrong. It underestimated its own populations. The West prepared sanctions to punish Russia but the various countries’ individual populations, in a synergy with and admiration of Ukraine’s population, got out ahead of Western politicians and showed they wanted steps taken, not just to punish Russia, but to win the war.
Tentative early bets: Russian military leadership is replaced for lack of logistic finesse (traffic jams), failure to motivate troops. Still unclear is whether they’ll be cleaned out by the current or future political leadership. Russian military hardware itself may be non-trivially degraded too. Surely shoulder mounted weaponry must be pouring across Ukraine’s open western border to jam up that extraordinarily long column of Russia hdardware northeast of Kyiv. Leaving that west border so open may thus be seen as a further tactical error by Russian military leadership.
Finally, there is a Vladimir Lenin quote, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The very idea that Germany ever even considered it would be all right to build a pipeline around Ukraine for itself, with all of seven days of hindsight, looks utterly self-centered and wildly haughty. The realization that that’s so apparent now is one measure of how much the world has changed.
It’s a very dynamic situation after week one with the West far more deeply engaged that they’d thought. Precedents have been set – the EU sending arms, dramatic German engagement, sanctioning of the Russian central bank. This one in particular wasn’t even on the agenda. Central banks are institutions that until now had been thought of as sovereign, like embassies are on foreign soil.
Tonight it looks like we’re approaching a siege of Kyiv. I think it’s a good time to pull back from the blow by blow for a couple of days and listen to smart people (there are brilliant podcasts out there. One I recommend right now in particular is Ukr World). Meanwhile I’ll continue to curate the Assault on Ukraine Twitter list of Ukrainians, Officials, Ambassadors, OSINT, Think Tanks, Neighboring Countries, Reporters and others. It provides constant updates from actively engaged actors.
Windy and gray on our side of the hill today. Looks like an indoor weekend in the southern Appalachians.
Common Sense and Whiskey 