How the weak can win – A primer on protracted war
There is absolutely no justification for Putin&#x27;s war here. None. But Putin can be wrong AND the US can be wrong AND Ukraine can be ill-prepared all at the same time. These aren&#x27;t muttually exclusive.<p>Following Russia&#x27;s annexation of Crimea in 2014, here&#x27;s what should&#x27;ve happened:<p>1. The US should&#x27;ve formally and explicitly abandoned the effort to bring Ukraine into NATO;<p>2. Ukraine should&#x27;ve adopted a policy of official neutrality;<p>3. Ukraine should&#x27;ve abandoned efforts against minority language rights, a particularly sensitive issue with primarily-Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine;<p>4. Ukraine should&#x27;ve restructured its military into a defensive army, which is to say that it should be largely decentralized and trained in insurgency tactics. The idea of this is to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. This is essentially the Swiss model [1]. This would mean acquiring appropriate weapons: small arms, mobile artillery, Stringer missiles, that sort of thing. An advantage of this is that a defensive army is relatively cheap; and<p>5. Just like Russia performed military exercises every year on Ukraine&#x27;s borders (as an aside, the media never mentioned that Russia in fact did this every 12-15 months for years), Ukraine should&#x27;ve planned for a Russian invasion with their own exercises. This means training for and practicing things taking out key bridges;<p>6. Ukraine should&#x27;ve fortified chokepoints that Russia could use to invade. This would particularly include the narrow land bridge to Crimea.<p>This is part of the sheer recklessness of US foreign policy as we egged Ukraine on with empty promises of standing behind them when there was absolutely no possibility we&#x27;d put boots on the ground in the case of a Russian invasion. We didn&#x27;t start the fire but we sure left a lot of fuel lying around. And Ukraine is paying a bloody price.<p>The best thing Ukraine could&#x27;ve done post-annexation is brought in Hezbollah as consultants on military organization and insurgency tactics. And no, I&#x27;m not even joking when I say that.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Total_Resistance_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Total_Resistance_(book)</a>